Povídky z jedné a z druhé kapsy – Čapek Karel (2020)

Karel Čapek (1890-1938) is among the few literary giants whose works have lost none of their readability even three-quarters of a century after they were written. Of all his novels, prose, and brilliant essays, Tales from the First and Second Pocket are among the very best. Mostly detective stories, whose heroes are police commissioners, agents, guards, gendarmes, but also marriage swindlers, criminals, or fanatical collectors, they offer far more than meets the eye. Čapek applied all aspects of his exceptional talent in them. Not only is he a great storyteller of thrilling tales, but he is also a master of paradoxes, an author who sometimes employs his sense of subtle irony (a poet subconsciously captures the license plate of the car that hit a woman in his verses), at other times he presents his conception of justice, which cannot be confined to any laws, and at times, half-seriously and with a quiet smile, he showcases a new psychoanalytic method to convict a murderer and quickly identify a journalist. Čapek's stories have been translated into all conceivable languages, and most of them undoubtedly stand up to comparison with the works of the greatest masters of short prose in world literature; I admit that I have never read any book as many times and with...