CAPEK'S VERSATILITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

CAPEK'S VERSATILITY.

DELIGHTFUL FAIRY TALES. One never knows with Karel Capek "where that one will puck out." Perhaps tho fairy tales should have been expected by those who follow this Czech artist in literature, for indeed most of his work is in that vein, and yet his latest book, called plainly "Fairy Tales" (with one other as x a make-weight by Joseph Capek), comes as a surprise. The man who wrote "The Insect Play" and "R.TJ.R."—grimmest of futuristic plays —and who turns lightly to a facetious book on gardening, has a fanciful and adventuring mind. Something of himself he revealed' in "Letters From England," a charming, penetrating book, in which he' pokes all sorts of fun at our • English, 'ways and institutions, knocking our little gods from their pedestals only to • pick them up and gently replace them, healing our wounded vanity with a great affection. We feel after reading "Letters From England"" that we have "got" Karel Capek, and that there is a good foundation of understanding between ourselves and the author when we look into the pages of a new book. His "Fairy Tales" peoples our everyday English world with a host of fairies, magicians, and pigmies, who rub shoulders with cats and dogs, children and bandits, princes,

tramps, postmen, and -policemen. It is a sane, wholesome world but full of rollicking* and nonsensical adventure, and we wonder we never noticed before how entertaining modern life can be. The book is a translation, and we are told it has been necessary for the English setting to make a few alterations in the text. If it is Czech in ' spirit it is also English, which goes to show that when we come down to really human things we are all the same. "Fairy Tales" is a tonic, for young and old, and the volume, illustrated in black and white by Joseph Capek, and published by Allen and Unwin, is a fine production.