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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: The Writer between Two Worlds -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on the Text -- 1. Reflecting on Exile: An Interview with Josef Škvorecký (1989-92) -- 2. Tongue-tied Eloquence: Notes on Language, Exile, and Writing (1989) (Occasioned by reading Josef Škvorecký) / Barańczak, Stanisław -- 3. Preface to the French Edition of Mirákl (The Miracle Game) (1978) / Kundera, Milan -- 4. 'Where Is My Home?': Some Notes on Reading Josef Škvorecký in Amerika (1989) / Solecki, Sam -- 5. The Demolisher of False Myths (1980) / Kosková, Helena -- 6. Life into Art: From Josef Škvorecký to Daniel Smiřický (1989) / Žekulin, Gleb -- 7. Remembering 'The Song of the Forgotten Years' (1989) / Dorůžka, Lubomír -- 8. The Case of the Mangy Pussycat: An Account of the Literary Scandal Surrounding the Publication of The Cowards (1980) / Schonberg, Michal -- 9. Last Jitterbug in Prague: Konec nylonoveho věku (1989) / Hájek, Igor -- 10. The Girl and the Legend: Josef Škvorecký's 'Emöke' (1980) / Brink, André -- 11. Catholicity as Textual Function and Authorial Creed in Miss Silver's Past (1989) / Rostinsky, Joseph N. -- 12. The Emigrant as Hero: The Engineer of Human Souls (1984) / Kott, Jan -- 13. The Engineer of Human Souls m Czech and in English (1991) / Petro, Peter -- 14. The Unforgivable Sin of Ignorance: Notes on The Engineer of Human Souls (1989) / Woodcock, George -- 15. New World Symphonietta: Dvorak in Love (1.987) / Rothstein, Edward -- 16. A World Symphony in a Scherzo: Dvorak in Love (1986) / Agoetz-Stankiewicz, Market -- 17. Meeting Josef Škvorecký (1989) / Hrubý, Peter -- 18. The Poetics of Prague: Literary Images of a City (1989) / Gibian, George -- 19. The Girl from Prague: A Conversation with Zdena Salivarova (1989-92) -- Chronology -- Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index The noted scholar and critic George Steiner has called the Czech-Canadian author Josef Skvorecky 'one of the major literary figures of our time,' yet to date few books on him and his writing have appeared in English. The Achievement of Josef Skvorecky is the first collection of essays in any language to be devoted to his work. Skvorecky was born in 1924, and his life spans most of the major historical events of twentieth-century Europe. An exile who left Prague after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, he is among those distinguished writers and artists who produced much of their major work in exile. From this first book, The Cowards (1958), his novels have offered an indispensable fictional account of nearly a century of Czech life and history. Though Skvorecky is essentially a comic and anti-political writer, his novels engage some of the largest and most pressing political, historical, and ideological issues of the century: fascism, communism, the nature of totalitarianism, the fate of religion. Skvorecky is that rare being, a creative writer who is also a teacher, a man of letters, and an intellectual. Sam Solecki has collected and commissioned essays from around the world that provide an overview of Skvorecky's work, place him in a larger cultural and international context, and offer readings of his fiction. Among the contributors are such well-known writers and scholars as Milan Kundera, Jan Kott, George Woodcock, Andre Brink, George Gibian, Igor Hajek, and Stanislaw Baranczak
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