The Gardener's Year - Softcover

Capek, Karel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486817245 ISBN 13: 9780486817248

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2017

Synopsis

"This very entertaining volume with its delightfully humorous pictures should be read by all gardeners." — Nature
"Mr. Čapek writes with sympathy, understanding, and humor." — The New York Times
"Has a mellowness and a charm that give it a high place in the humorous literature of gardening ... will delight the amateur gardener, and indeed everyone else." — Saturday Review
The creator of this book is best known internationally as the author of R.U.R., the science-fiction play that introduced the term "robot" to the world. Karel Čapek's satiric gifts take a different turn in this impishly comic book, which recounts the trials, labors, joys, and meditations of the amateur gardener.
Rather than a how-to book, Čapek's volume offers a lighthearted mock-treatise on the pains and rewards of tending a small and resistant garden plot. From January to December, the author and his brother, illustrator Josef Čapek, trace the vagaries of the amateur horticulturist's year, with brief side notes on seeds, the soil, plants, the beauties of autumn, and other aspects of gardening. Fifty-nine delightful drawings complement this book, which will amuse readers with and without green thumbs.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

ernationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek comes this beautifully written and marvelously apt account of the trials and tribulations of the gardener’s life. First published in Prague in 1929, The Gardener’s Year combines a richly comic portrait of life in the garden, narrated month by month, with a series of delightful illustrations by the author’s older brother and collaborator, Josef. Capek’s gardeners—all too human, despite their lofty aspirations—often look the fool, whether they be found sopping wet, victims of the cobralike water hose, or hunched over, hands immersed in the soil, “presenting their rumps to the splendid azure sky.” In their repeated folly, Capek gives us not only cause for laughter but also, in the end, “testimony of the imperishable and miraculous optimism of the human race.”

This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times<

From the Back Cover:

“There was no writer like him.” —Arthur Miller

“A charming and loving chronicle of the Czechoslovak playwright’s backyard garden in Prague. . . . [A] funny but meaty little book.” —The New York Times

“Capek’s work has lost nothing of its freshness and luster.” —The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0486817245
• ISBN 13: 9780486817248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112
• Illustrator: Capek Josef