BiblioVault - Books about Vancura, Vladislav

Ploughshares into Swords

Vladislav Vancura

Karolinum Press, 2021

The first English-language translation of a classic Czech antiwar novel written in the wake of WWI.

Originally published in 1925, Ploughshares into Swords is an expressionist antiwar novel in which Vladislav Vančura tells the story of the denizens of the Ouhrov estate in language as baroque as the manor that ties them all together. The fragmented narrative introduces the reader to such characters as Baron Danowitz, his sons, his French concubine, the farmhand František Hora, and the mentally disabled murderer Řeka in the autumn of 1913, before revealing their fates during World War I. Ranging from the peaceful farmlands of Bohemia to the battlefields of Galicia, taking in the pubs of Budapest and the hospitals of Krakow, the novel constitutes an unsentimental and naturalistic approach to the war that created Czechoslovakia. Ploughshares into Swords is a stunning novel by one of Czech literature’s most important writers. This modernist masterpiece, reminiscent of the work of Isaac Babel and William Faulkner, is now available in English for the very first time.

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Summer of Caprice

Vladislav Vancura

Karolinum Press, 2016

Summer of Caprice, a captivating comic novel first published in 1926, is a classic of Czech literature, yet it is little known elsewhere. Commonly considered untranslatable due to the complexities of the text, which is characterized by a playful narrative and an exceptional mastery of language, and its profound cultural context, it is rendered here in English that beautifully captures Vladislav Vančura’s experimental style—or, as the author himself called it, his “poetism in prose.” Mixing the archaic with the innovative, raw colloquialisms with biblical quotations, Summer of Caprice opens an uproarious window onto the Czech spirit, humor, and way of life.

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Summer of Caprice

Vladislav Vancura

Karolinum Press, 2006

Summer of Caprice, a captivating comic novel first published in 1926, is a classic of Czech literature, yet it is little known elsewhere. Commonly considered untranslatable due to the complexities of the text, which is characterized by a playful narrative and an exceptional mastery of language, and its profound cultural context, it is rendered here in English that beautifully captures Vladislav Vančura’s experimental style—or, as the author himself called it, his “poetism in prose.” Mixing the archaic with the innovative, raw colloquialisms with biblical quotations, Summer of Caprice opens an uproarious window onto the Czech spirit, humor, and way of life.

[more]