Tales from Two Pockets

Review by Andrew Murray Scott

This collection of 48 mystery stories by one of the greatest Czech authors, Karel Čapek, who died in 1938, is actually the first English edition of the work and is available from US publisher Catbird Press via online book stores.

Čapek gave the world the word ‘robot’ and was a playwright, novelist and journalist, whose plays were successfully performed on Broadway, some written in collaboration with his brother, Josef Čapek.

Influenced by reading classic detective fiction (and a visit to 22b Baker Street in 1924), he set about creating a new canon of mystery fiction in colloquial Czech