Biography Essay

Karel Polacek is, along with Karel Capek and Jaroslav Hasek, one of the most important Czech novelists between the two world wars. Like Capek, Polacek is an interpreter of everyday life, and like Hasek he is a great antiwar writer. Polacek's style and language are also distinctive, not through literary affectation but by his use of lively everyday speech beside bookish expressions.

Since Polacek's death, publication has been limited more or less to his smaller humorous works for reasons that have nothing to do with literature— that is, for ideological, financial, personal, or racial motives. Thanks to his popular humorous books, especially the novel of his boyhood memories, Bylo nas pet (There Were Five of Us, 1946), and the short novels Muzi v offsidu (Men Offside, 1931) and Hostinec U kamenneho stolu (The Stone Table Inn, 1941), Polacek, his language, his typical characters, and his subjects have become...