Viktor Dyk, one of the most versatile figures in Czech literature, wrote poems, short stories, novels, plays, and essays. He was an exceptionally prolific journalist, writing about politics, current affairs, and cultural matters. His entire canon reflects the complicated, unsettled political and ethnic situation both in the multinational Austro-Hungarian monarchy and in postwar Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the resulting conflicts between Czechs and Germans.

Viktor Dyk was born on 31 December 1877 in Psovka, a village that is now part of the town of Melník in central Bohemia. He was the second son of the manager of the Melník estate of Prince Jirí of Lobkovic. He had an uneventful childhood in a highly cultured patriarchal family with no financial worries. After completing secondary school in Prague he studied in the Faculty of Law at Charles-Ferdinand University in that city, where he engaged...