The Engineer of Human Souls

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Overview

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History.

As adventuresome, ...

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More About This Book

Overview

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History.

As adventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel written in the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls is worthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents,
Love and Death."

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Editorial Reviews

Book World Washington Post
Skvorecky is so much of a writer that the moment he puts pen to paper, he can't help being an artist.—Paul West
Los Angeles Times Book Review
It is . . . so entertaining that it would be dangerous to read it without laughing aloud.
New York Times Book Review
The Engineer of Human Souls is a deep pleasure to read.
Newsweek
Among its many other virtues, The Engineer of Human Souls is perhaps the funniest academic novel since Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man.
The New Yorker
[Skvorecky is] one of the major literary figures of our time . . . a novelist of the first rank . . . one of the masters of current Czech literature. . . . His novels are sad, funny--and utterly gripping."
Times Literary Supplement
Josef Skvorecky is unquestionably an important writer, blending a great humorous talent with a restless, sustained, probing moral inquisitiveness. . . . The Engineer of Human Souls will certainly introduce the reader to the distinctive Skvorecky world.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781564781994
  • Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
  • Publication date: 2/28/1999
  • Series: Eastern European Literature Series
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 571
  • Sales rank: 758,830
  • Product dimensions: 6.10 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 1.30 (d)

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