Saturnin
Second Edition
Zdenek Jirotka author Mark Corner translator Adolf Born illustrator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Karolinum,Nakladatelstvi Univerzity Karlovy,Czech Republic
Published:13th Dec '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A new edition of a classic of Czech literature and literary comedy.
Upon its initial publication in Czech in 1942, Saturnin was a bestseller. This is entirely appropriate, for while Saturnin draws on a tradition of Czech comedy and authors such as J. Hašek, K. Čapek, and K. Poláček, it was also clearly influenced by the English masters Jerome K. Jerome and P. G. Wodehouse. Saturnin is the story of a young man in love and his faithful servant Saturnin, who upsets the peaceful rhythm of his master’s domestic arrangements and turns his life inside out. He lures him into an exotic world where he is forced to live dangerously, and he shows him how to cope with any situation. Saturnin lays bare the weaknesses of others and compels them to disclose their “true” nature—he is a subversive servant.
Written at a time when Czechoslovakia was deep in the grip of the Nazi occupation, Saturnin showed how one form of resistance was to put the world created by invasion out of your mind and create another. However, so recognizably Czech was that “other” that its popularity did not diminish with the end of the war or, indeed, with the end of the forty years of communism that followed the war’s end. The book has been adapted for radio and television, produced as a film, and has a regular place in the repertoire of the Czech stage.
ISBN: 9788024650746
Dimensions: 235mm x 145mm x 24mm
Weight: 567g
254 pages
Second Edition