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Original Title:	Příběh inženýra lidských duší
ISBN:	1564781992 (ISBN13: 9781564781994)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Danny Smiřický
Characters:	Danny Smiricky
Literary Awards:	Angelus (2009)

The Engineer of Human Souls (Danny Smiřický) Paperback | Pages: 592 pages

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Title	:	The Engineer of Human Souls (Danny Smiřický)
Author	:	Josef Škvorecký
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 592 pages
Published	:	February 28th 2000 by Dalkey Archive Press (first published 1977)
Categories	:	Fiction. European Literature. Czech Literature

Relation To Books The Engineer of Human Souls (Danny Smiřický)

The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History. As adventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel written in the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls is worthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents, Love and Death."

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Ratings: 4.16 From 834 Users | 80 Reviews

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A description of this novel can give some idea of the various materials it's woven together from, but won't mention any of the large gallery of riotous, pathetic, human characters. Any book as full as this one -- telling only part of the protagonist's life but suggesting that there's much more; moving through three or more levels of time at once; incorporating the letters of many characters in a way that never feels irrelevant; including, as well, the reading of American literature, illuminated

If you want to read about the Czech post war history- at home and in exile, read this. A great book.Full of humanity. Canadians will like it, too.

We rejoin Danny Smiricky (from THE COWARDS), as an expatriate professor in Toronto, where he explores his present life of pretty student, and Czech secret agents, as well as some of the unresolved stories of his past during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II.

Skvorecky, a Czech emigre who left his native land for Canada after the Soviet put down of the Prague Spring, and with Milan Kundera and Bohumil Hrabal is one of that nation's great writers has really written two books here. In the book's dual plots - Professor Danny Smiricky looks back at his young wartime adventures while negotiating tenure and academic politics at a Toronto university - he manages both to capture the transition from young adulthood to adulthood and adulthood into old age. If

There is beauty everywhere on earth, but there is greater beauty in those places where one feels that sense of ease which comes from no longer having to put off ones dreams until some improbable future-a future inexorably shrinking away; where the fear which has pervaded ones life suddenly vanishes because there is nothing to be afraid ofSo the main character of The Engineer of Human Souls observes from the relative safety of suburban Toronto, reflecting on his escape from a nation strangled by

"The Engineer of Human Souls" is a 20th century Czech novel and like every obediently disobedient 20th century Czech novel, it tells the story of a dissident male writer in trouble with his government for reasons that seem especially hazy in light of his more pressing preoccupation with philandering. With the surrounding political turmoil, meaning is extracted from love and art.Dan Smiricky is a Canadian English professor and Bohemian exile from Kostelec. He goes about life teaching literature

If Milan Kundera had gotten together with Orhan Pamuk to rewrite Snow with more of a postmodern flourish...Toss in 'the immigrant experience' and a dash of post-war paranoia, and we're getting close to this book. Absolutely loved the lit-classroom dialogues on literature and politics and the accompanying allusions and metaphors. I wasn't in love with his prose, however, as it was burdened from time to time (and time again) with cliche. Still a rich and resounding read.