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Karel Capek. Apocryphal Tales: With a Selection of Fables and Would-Be Tales. Norma Comrada, tr. North Haven, Ct. Catbird. 1997. 190 pages. $13.95. ISBN 0-945774-34-6.
The choice of Apocryphal Tales as the latest new translation from the works of Karel Capek is most felicitous. As short stories in the technical sense, they connect up with his 7'n.les from Two Pockets (see WLT 69:1, p. 180) while showing another aspect of the author's art at the same time.
Written between 1920 and 1938, the tales provide a large sampling of Capek's responses to contemporary events and to problems which interested, amused, or worried him. Having removed the romantic aura with which history veiled old-time characters, Capek transformed them into his contemporaries acting in various historical, biblical, legendary, literary, or political contexts, so that they appear natural and human. M ho would think that...