Škvorecký, Josef 1924–

(Josef Vaclav Škvorecký)

PERSONAL: Surname pronounced "Shquor-et-skee"; born September 27, 1924, in Nachod, Czechoslovakia; immigrated to Canada, 1969; son of Josef Karel (a bank clerk) and Anna Marie (Kurazova) Škvorecký; married Zdenka Salivarova (a writer and publisher), March 31, 1958. Education: Charles University, Prague, Ph.D., 1951; postgraduate study at Masaryk University, 1991, University of Calgary, 1992, and University of Toronto, 1992. Politics: Progressive conservative. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Film, jazz (Škvorecký plays the saxophone), American folklore.

ADDRESSES: Home—487 Sackville St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4X 1T6. Agent—Nicole Winstanley, Westwood Creative Artists, 94 Harbord St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1G6.

CAREER: Odeon Publishers, Prague, Czechoslovakia, editor of Anglo-American department, 1953–56; World Literature Magazine, Prague, assistant editor-in-chief, 1956–59; freelance writer in Prague, 1963–69; University of Toronto, Erindale College, Mississawga, Ontario, special lecturer in English and Slavic drama, 1969–71, writer-in-residence, 1970–71, associate professor, 1971–75, professor of English, 1975–90, professor emeritus, 1990–. 68 Publishers, co-founder and editor-in-chief, 1972–. Advisor to Czech President Vaclav Havel. Founded Academy of Creative Writing in Prague, 2000. Military service: Czechoslovak Army (Tank Corps), 1951–53.

MEMBER: International PEN, International Association of Crime Writers, Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Mystery Writers of America, Royal Society of Canada (fellow), Crime Writers of Canada, Canadian Writers Union, Czechoslovak National Association of Canada, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Letters (honorary member), Order of Canada.

AWARDS, HONORS: Literary Award of Czechoslovakian Writers Union, 1968; Neustadt International Prize for Literature, 1980; Guggenheim fellowship, 1980; Silver Awards for Best Fiction Publication in Canadian Magazines, 1980, 1981; nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, 1982; Governor General's Award for Best Fiction, 1984, for The Engineer of Human Souls; City of Toronto Book Award 1985; Echoing Green Foundation Literature Prize, 1985; D.H.L., State University of New York, 1986, Masaryk University, Brno, 1991, University of Calgary, 1992, University of Toronto, 1992, and McMaster University, Hamilton, 1993; Czechoslovak Order of the White Lion, 1990; Order of Canada, appointed member, 1992; Chevalier de L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Republique Fran?aise, 1996; State Prize for Literature, Czechoslovakia, 1999; Pangea/Comenius Award, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Zbabelci (novel), Ceskoslovensky spisovatel (Prague, Czechoslovakia), 1958, 4th edition, Nase vojsko (Prague), 1968, translated by Jeanne Nemcova as The Cowards, Grove (New York, NY), 1970.

Legenda Emoke (novel; title means "The Legend of Emoke"), Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1963, second edition, 1965.

Sedmiramenny svicen (stories; title means "The Menorah"), Nase vojsko, 1964, 2nd edition, 1965.

Babylonsky pribeh (stories; title means "A Babylonian Story"), Svobodne Slovo (Prague, Czechoslovakia), 1965.

Napady ctenare detektivek (essays; title means "Reading Detective Stories"), Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1965.

Ze zivota lepsi spolecnosti (stories; title means "The Life of Better Society"), Mlada fronta (Prague, Czechoslovakia), 1965.

Smutek porucika Boruvka (stories), Mlada fronta, 1966, translated as The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka, Gollancz (London, England), 1974.

Konec nylonoveho veku (novel; title means "The End of the Nylon Age"), Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1967.

O nich—o nas (essays; title means "About Them—Which Is about Us"), Kruh (Hradec Kralove), 1968.

(With Evald Schorm) Fararuv Konec (novelization of Skvorecký's filmscript "Konec farare"; title means "End of a Priest"; also see below), Kruh, 1969.

Lvice (novel), Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1969, translated as Miss Silver's Past, Grove (New York, NY), 1973.

Horkej svet: Povidky z let, 1946–1967 (title means "The Bitter World: Selected Stories, 1947–1967"), Odeon (Prague, Czechoslovakia), 1969.

Tankovy prapor (novel; title means "The Tank Corps"), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1971, translated as Republic of Whores: A Fragment from the Time of the Cults, Ecco (New York, NY), 1994.

All the Bright Young Men and Women: A Personal History of the Czech Cinema, translation by Michael Schonberg, Peter Martin Associates, 1971.

Mirakl, 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1972, translated by Paul Wilson as The Miracle Game, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

Hrichy pro patera Knoxe, (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973, translated by Kaca Polackova-Henley as Sins for Father Knox, Norton (New York, NY), 1989.

Prima Sezona (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1974, translated as The Swell Season, Ecco (New York, NY), 1986.

Konec porucika Boruvka (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1975, translated as The End of Lieutenant Boruvka, Norton (New York, NY), 1990.

Pribeh inzenyra lidskych dusi (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977, translated as The Engineer of Human Souls: An Entertainment of the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, the Working Class, Secret Agents, Love, and Death, Knopf (New York, NY), 1984.

The Bass Saxophone, translation by Kaca Polackova-Henley, Knopf (New York, NY), 1979.

Navrat porucika Boruvka (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1980, translated by Paul Wilson as The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka, Norton (New York, NY), 1991.

Jiri Menzel and the History of the "Closely Watched Trains" (comparative study), University of Colorado Press (Boulder, CO), 1982.

Scherzo capriccioso (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1984, translated as Dvorak in Love, Knopf (New York, NY), 1986.

Ze zivota ceskae spolecnosti, 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

Talkin' Moscow Blues (essays), Ecco (New York, NY), 1990.

Nevesta z Texasu (novel), 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992, translated as The Bride of Texas, Knopf (New York, NY), 1996.

The Bass Saxophone: Two Novellas (includes the memoir Red Music, and the novellas The Bass Saxophone and Emoke), Ecco (New York, NY), 1994.

Pribech newspesneno saxofonisty: vlastni zivotopis = Dichtung und Wahrheit, Bla izkaasetkani (Prague, Czech Republic), 1994.

Pribehy o Lize a mladem Wertherovi a jine povidky, Ivo Zelezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 1994.

Headed for the Blues: A Memoir, translated by Kaca Polackova-Henley, Ecco (New York, NY), 1996.

Nove canterburske povidky a jine pribehy, Ivo Zelezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 1996.

Povidky tenorsaxofonisty (stories), translated by Caleb Crain, Kaca Polackova-Henley, and Peter Kussi as The Tenor Saxophonist's Story, Ecco (New York, NY), 1997.

Nevysvetlitelny pribeh, aneb Vypraveni Questa Firma Sicula, (title means "An Unexplainable Story or The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus") Ivo Zelazny (Prague, Czech Republic), 1999, translation by Kaca Polackova-Henley as An inexplicable story, or, The narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus, Key Porter Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

(With Zdena Salivarová) Kratke setkani, s vrazdou, (novel; title means "Brief Encounter, with Murder") Ivo Selezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 1999.

Two Murders in My Double Life: A Crime Novel in Two Interlocking Movements, Key Porter Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2001.

When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey (stories), Key Porter Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(With Zdena Salivarová) Setkani na konci ery, s vrazdou, (novel; title means "Encounter at the End of an Era, with Murder") Ivo Selezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 2001.

(With Zdena Salivarová) Setkani po letech, s vrazdou, Ivo Zelezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 2001.

Pulchra: Pribeh o krasne planete, (science fiction) Petrov (Brno, Czech Republic), 2003.

Škvorecký's complete works in thirteen volumes were published by Ivo Zelezny (Prague, Czech Republic), 1998–99.

EDITOR

Selected Writings of Sinclair Lewis, Odeon, 1964–69.

(With P.L. Doruzka) Tvar jazzu (anthology; title means "The Face of Jazz"), Statni hudebni vydavatelstvi (Prague, Czechoslovakia), Part 1, 1964, Part 2, 1966.

Collected Writings of Ernest Hemingway, Odeon, 1965–69.

Three Times Hercule Poirot, Odeon, 1965.

(With P.L. Doruzka) Jazzova inspirace (poetry anthology; title means "The Jazz Inspiration"), Odeon, 1966.

Nachrichten aus der CSSR (title means "News from Czechoslovakia"), translation by Vera Cerna and others, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt, Germany), 1968.

Also author of afterword for Indecent Dreams, by Arnost Lustig, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1990; author of introduction for The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, by Bohumil Hrabal, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1993. Author of movie screenplays, including Zlocin v divci skole (title means "Crime in a Girl's School"), 1966; Zlocin v santanu (title means "Crime in a Night Club"), 1968; Konec farare (title means "End of a Priest"), 1969; Flirt se slecnou Stribrnou (title means "Flirtations with Miss Silver"), 1969; and Sest cernych divek (title means "Six Brunettes"), 1969. Author of scripts for television programs. Author of prefaces and introductions to Czech and Slovak editions of the works of Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Stephen Crane, Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, and others. Translator of numerous books from English to Czech, including the works of Ray Bradbury, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, and others.

ADAPTATIONS: Tankovy prapor was produced as a feature film by BONTON Co. in Prague, 1991; several other works have been produced as films for Czech television.

SIDELIGHTS: "In his native country, Josef Škvorecký is a household word," fellow Czech author Arnost Lustig told the Washington Post. Skvorecký, whose idiomatic and highly colloquial fictions in his native language defy easy translation, is among the most noted twentieth-century expatriate Czech authors. His works provide a mordant commentary on the political and cultural differences between his war-weary homeland and his adopted nation, Canada, where he has lived since 1969. Škvorecký is also acclaimed as the founder and director of 68 Publishers, a Toronto-based publishing firm that has helped dissident Czech and Slovak writers get into print. According to Neil Bermel in the New York Times Book Review, Škvorecký is "the pre-eminent Czech interpreter of [the] theme of home and exile, in his life and in his work…. His refusal to bend his writing to official views eventually led to his leaving Czechoslovakia in 1969, and taking up residence in Canada." In 2000, Škvorecký set up the Academy of Creative Writing in Prague, the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic, with the express aim of training new generations of Czech and Slovak writers.

Škvorecký wrote his first novel, The Cowards, in 1948 when he was twenty-four. Not published until 1958, the book caused a flurry of excitement that led to "firings in the publishing house, ragings in the official press, and a general purge that extended eventually throughout the arts," to quote Neal Ascherson in the New York Review of Books. The book was banned by Czech officials one month after publication, marking "the start of an incredible campaign of vilification against the author," a Times Literary Supplement reviewer reported. Škvorecký subsequently included a "cheeky and impenitent Introduction," Ascherson noted in the novel's second edition. "In spite of all the suppression," the Times Literary Supplement critic explained, "The Cowards became a milestone in Czech literature and Joseph Škvorecký one of the country's most popular writers." Formerly a member of the central committees of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union and the Czechoslovak Film and Television Artists, Škvorecký chose exile and immigrated to Canada following the Soviet invasion of his country.

Ascherson explained why The Cowards caused so much controversy: "It is not at all the sort of mirror official Czechoslovakia would wish to glance in. A recurring theme is … pity for the Germans, defeated and bewildered…. The Russians strike [the main character] as alluring primitives (his use of the word 'Mongolian' about them caused much of the scandal in 1958)." The Times Literary Supplement writer added that the novel "turned out to be anti-Party and anti-God at the same time; everybody felt himself a victim of the author's satire." Set in a provincial Bohemian town, the story's events unfold in May, 1945, as the Nazis retreat and the Russian army takes control of an area populated with "released prisoners of war, British, Italian, French and Russian (Mongolians, these, whom the locals do not find very clean), and Jewish women survivors from a concentration camp," wrote Stuart Hood in the Listener. The narrator, twenty-year-old Danny Smiricky, and his friends—members of a jazz band—observe the flux of power, human nature, and death around them while devoting their thoughts and energies to women and music. "These are, by definition, no heroes," stated Hood. "They find themselves caught up in a farce which turns into horror from one minute to the next." The group may dream of making a bold move for their country, but, as Charles Dollen noted in Best Sellers, "they never make anything but music."

Labeled judeonegroid (Jewish-Negro) and suppressed by the Nazis, jazz becomes political. To play blues or sing scat is to stand up for "individual freedom and spontaneity," stated Terry Winch in the Washington Post Book World. "In other words, [jazz] stood for everything the Nazis hated and wanted to crush." Škvorecký, like his narrator, was a jazz musician during the Nazi "protectorate." The author wields this music as a "goad, the 'sharp thorn in the sides of the power-hungry men, from Hitler to Brezhnev,'" Saul Maloff declared in the New York Times Book Review. Described as a "highly metaphorical writer" by Winch, Škvorecký often employs jazz "in its familiar historical and international role as a symbol (and a breeding-ground) of anti-authoritarian attitudes," according to Russell Davies in the Times Literary Supplement.

Škvorecký follows the life of the semi-autobiographical character Danny Smiricky in Tankovy prapor ("The Tank Corps"), translated as The Republic of Whores: A Fragment from the Time of the Cults; The Miracle Game; The Bass Saxophone; The Engineer of Human Souls: An Entertainment of the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, the Working Class, Secret Agents, Love, and Death; and Two Murders in My Double Life: A Crime Novel in Two Interlocking Movements. The Republic of Whores portrays Danny as a conscript in a Czechoslovakian tank division during the 1950s. This bitter satire exposes the hypocrisy and incompetence of the East Bloc military through Škvorecký's depiction of sadistic officers, idiotic interrogations, mock battles, habitual drunkenness, and sexual liaisons. "Mr. Škvorecký has made a reputation as one of the pre-eminent writers of postwar Europe. For him to have composed such a scathing fictional indictment of the Soviet military system while he was still within its jurisdiction was an act of considerable courage," declared James McManus in the New York Times Book Review. John-Paul Flintoff noted in the Times Literary Supplement: "Hard-boiled cynicism is not confined to the army, according to Škvorecký. The whole of Czechoslovakia is the same—nobody really cares about anything—hence the insistent reference to whoredom, in the [translator's] title and in the text."

Škvorecký builds on this theme in The Miracle Game. The novel opens in 1948 in a provincial Czechoslovakian town under Stalinist rule where Danny has secured employment as a teacher at a girl's school. While Danny is bedridden with gonorrhea and characteristically absent, a local priest claims that a statue of Saint Joseph has miraculously moved. Despite the unequivocal rejection of his claim by Communist authorities, the priest insists on the reality of the miracle until he is eventually tortured and killed by the police. In 1968, twenty years later, Danny returns to the place of this tragic mystery to investigate the veracity of the priest's sighting and to determine if it may have been a prank or a Communist ruse to discredit the church. "Danny is a self-described 'misguided counter-revolutionary of minor importance, re-educable, the author of librettos for musical comedies, of detective novels and comedy films, fearing God less than he feared the world, a skeptic,'" noted David Rieff in the Washington Post Book World. "In the end," Rieff added, "Danny both solves the riddle and lets the mystery stand. 'Every idea brought into fruition is awful,' he reflects somberly, even a miracle."

The Miracle Game recounts life during the dark years of Soviet hegemony over Czechoslovakia and alludes to the then-unforeseeable possibility of change. Stephanie Strom observed in the New York Times Book Review, "Josef Škvorecký began writing The Miracle Game when it seemed that a bloodless revolution installing a liberal intellectual at the helm of his native Czechoslovakia would require a miracle." Describing the significance of the miraculous statue in the novel, New York Times Book Review contributor Angela Carter maintained, "The statue, freshly painted in bright greens, blues and pinks by a devout toy maker, is an image of innocence, of faith, perhaps even hope, which emerges battered but unbowed from the long winter of Communist oppression and survives even the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring, in 1968, when, for a brief moment, it looked as if the system might renew itself." However, this hope vanished when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to support the Communist Party. "The novel teems with well-drawn figures, from jazzmen to schoolgirls, intellectuals to priests, pious old ladies to true Communist believers," wrote Peter Sherwood in the Times Literary Supplement. "None the less," Sherwood added, "its high points are the manic set-pieces which encapsulate in all its painful absurdity life behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1950s and for far too long thereafter."

The Bass Saxophone contains a memoir and two novellas first published individually in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s. Like The Cowards, the memoir Red Music, observed Maloff, "evokes the atmosphere of that bleak time [during World War II], the strange career of indigenous American music transplanted abroad to the unlikeliest soil." Although it is only a "brief preface to the stories," Winch maintained that the memoir "in some ways is the more interesting section" of the book. Davies believed that the "short and passionate essay" shows how, "since [the jazz enthusiast in an Iron Curtain country] has sorrows other than his own to contend with, the music must carry for him not just a sense of isolation and longing but a bitterly practical political resentment."

Emoke, the novella that follows, is "fragile, lyrical, 'romantic'" and, like its title character, "fabulous: precisely the materials of fable," commented Maloff. Davies added that "in its poetic evocation of Emoke, a hurt and delicate creature with an array of spiritual cravings,… the story has a … depth of soul and concern." Winch, however, felt the woman "is not a vivid or forceful enough character to bear the burden of all she is asked to represent." The three critics believed that the title novella, The Bass Saxophone, is more successful, "perhaps because music, Škvorecký's real passion, is central to the narrative," Winch explained. Here, wrote Davies, music "emerges as a full symbolic and ideological force," whereas in Emoke it was "a mere undercurrent." The story of a boy playing music while under Nazi rule, claimed Maloff, is "sheer magic, a parable, a fable about art, about politics, about the zone where the two intersect." Writing in the Atlantic, Benjamin De Mott called The Bass Saxophone "an exceptionally haunting and restorative volume of fiction, a book in which literally nothing enters except the fully imagined, hence the fully exciting."

Škvorecký's writing continues to parallel his own life in subsequent novels and stories. Danny, again the main character in The Engineer of Human Souls, accepts a position at a small University of Toronto college. The ironic title alludes to Stalin's description of the writer's function. The main theme, brought out by the author's use of humor in the book, concerns the dangers of dogmatic thinking, the political naivete of Westerners, and the injustices of totalitarianism. Through flashback sequences and letters to other dissidents, Škvorecký juxtaposes Danny's past and present experiences in Czechoslovakia and Canada. Quill and Quire critic Mark Czarnecki asserted that as "an exhaustive, insightful document of modern society in both East and West, [The Engineer of Human Souls] has no equal." In a Canadian Forum review, Sam Solecki noted that The Engineer of Human Souls is also a "transitional novel for Škvorecký, in which we see him extending his imagination beyond his Czechoslovak past while still including it." Solecki also commented that this novel, which portrays Smiricky in his sixties, will probably bring "the Smiricky cycle to a close."

The Engineer of Human Souls is divided into seven long chapters named after American authors whom Danny discusses in class. Through commentary on major literary figures such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Škvorecký illustrates Danny's frustration over his students' misunderstanding of great literature, which uncomfortably recalls for him the uniformity and intolerance of the Communists. As Anthony Burgess noted in an Observer review, Danny's "students have no sense of history; for them the past contains events like the deaths of James Dean and Janis Joplin. Their response to art is glibly ideological, and Smiricky hears in their wretched little slogans the voices of his country's oppressors." According to Richard Eder in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "Škvorecký calls The Engineer of Human Souls an entertainment. It is, in places, so entertaining that it would be dangerous to read it without laughing aloud; in other places it is sad or dismaying. What he has really written, though, is an epic of his country and its exiles." Though some critics found shortcomings in the novel's amorphous plot and narrative meanderings, as Burgess noted, acclaimed Czechoslovakian novelist Milan Kundera regarded The Engineer of Human Souls as "a magnum opus."

In his novel Dvorak in Love Škvorecký builds on the theme of music which is maintained throughout the Smiricky books. Dvorak in Love is a fictionalized account of Škvorecký's compatriot, composer Antonin Dvorak, and his visit to New York City. The life of Dvorak, whose music was influenced by black folk music and jazz, provided the author with the perfect subject for discussing the synthesis "of the two dominant musical cultures of our time—the classical European tradition … and the jazzy American tradition," as William French put it in a Globe and Mail review. Although some reviewers, like Barbara Black, have found the narrative structure of the opening chapters of Dvorak in Love too complicated to enjoy, the author's characteristic humor later enlivens the story. "Best of all" in this book, remarked Black, "Škvorecký celebrates Dvorak and the musical trail he blazed."

Škvorecký has also produced a series of detective stories featuring Lieutenant Josef Boruvka, a painfully sensitive Prague police officer whose ardent humanism is nearly a professional liability. He dislikes guns, disapproves of the death penalty, and carefully solves crimes, though not without experiencing deep sadness for the captured perpetrators. The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka introduces the melancholic Boruvka through twelve interrelated stories centered around diverse themes including music, ballet, science, and mountain climbing. "Škvorecký's undeniable qualities as a fiction writer shine throughout the stories," wrote Alberto Manguel in Books in Canada. Manguel further contended that the stories lack enough convincing mystery to represent effective detective fiction. Citing elements of parody in Škvorecký's mysteries, Stewart Lindh observed in the Los Angeles Time Book Review: "Lurking at the side of every story is the following question: How can a detective find truth in a society concealing it? He can't." Summarizing Škvorecký's message, Lindh concluded that Boruvka "lives in a society that itself is guilty of a monstrous crime: the murder of truth."

Sins for Father Knox is a volume of ten detective stories in which Škvorecký deliberately sets out to violate the ten commandments of crime fiction writing as set down by Monsignor Ronald Knox, who lived between 1888 and 1957. Among his cardinal rules, Knox proclaimed that no more than one secret chamber or passage should exist in the story; that the detective must not have committed the crime himself; and that no previously unknown poisons should figure into the plot. Only two of the stories involve Lieutenant Boruvka, while the remainder feature Prague nightclub singer Eve Adam as she tours the Western world and solves crimes that leave the local police befuddled. D.J. Enright commented in the New York Review of Books, "In each tale the reader is challenged to spot both the guilty party and the commandment broken. Some of the mysteries are tricky in the extreme." Though praising the compelling characters, Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Ross Thomas found the Father Knox premise and cryptic formulas "tedious and opaque." Comparing the volume to an excursion on the Orient Express, Michael Dibdin concluded in the Observer that the stories represent "an elaborately unconvincing blend of parody and pastiche which will delight those nostalgic for the days before the detective story was gentrified into crime fiction."

Additional Boruvka detective stories appeared with the publication of The End of Lieutenant Boruvka and The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka. The End of Lieutenant Boruvka includes five stories based on actual criminal cases from Czech police files in the 1960s. Each of the stories, as Kati Marton noted in the New York Times Book Review, "throws a beam of light on a different aspect of the state in an advanced stage of decay. Mr. Škvorecký's people, though mostly clear-eyed about their lot, must still pay lip service to the lie that they are living in an egalitarian society." Marton observed, "The air is foul with revolutionary stench." Commenting on the seriousness of the extended, more developed narratives in The End of Lieutenant Boruvka, Peter Lewis concluded in Stand: "In this Orwellian world, murder can easily be newspeaked into suicide or accidental death. Škvorecký is therefore using the crime story to make a political statement about the endemic corruption and falsification of Communist rule, under which there is one law for the Party and another law for everyone else."

In The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka Boruvka has escaped from a Czechoslovakian prison, where he was detained for political crimes, and reappears as an expatriate in Toronto where he finds employment as a parking lot attendant. The novel is narrated by an amateur Canadian detective who employs the expertise of Boru-vka to solve the murder of a young woman whom Boruvka suspects was mistaken for the Czech editor of an anti-regime publication. After a second murder involving cyanide, Boruvka uncovers Old World divisions and malicious intrigue among a circle of wealthy exiles in the Czech émigré community. Though lamenting the diminished presence of Boruvka in the novel, New York Times Book Review contributor Marilyn Stasio noted the "preposterously funny, if poignant, tales of political intrigue and personal scandal" among the Eastern European population of Toronto. Christopher Wordsworth concluded in an Observer review that Škvorecký "is a fine novelist" whose depictions of "brain-sick politics are never outdated." Škvorecký turned to historical fiction in the 1990s with The Bride of Texas, a novel that recounts the adventures of Czech and Slovak immigrants who served in the Union army during the U.S. Civil War. The story opens near the end of the war with Czech troops assisting General William Tecumseh Sherman in his destructive campaign through the South. Inspired by his own research into the lives of actual immigrant troops, Škvorecký's complex subplots and flashbacks describe the lives of numerous characters in Europe and America before the war. "Mr. Škvorecký notes that nearly all of the characters here, including all but one of the Czech soldiers in the 26th Wisconsin, actually existed," wrote Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times Book Review. "Yet," Klinkenborg continued, "The Bride of Texas is pure, exalted romance generated by the forces we think of as constituting history itself." The romantic element of the novel centers primarily around Moravian Lida Toupelik, a Czech immigrant who is forced by her lover's disapproving father to emigrate to the U.S. where she marries the son of a plantation owner in Texas.

Commenting on Škvorecký's historical portrayal of the U.S. Civil War, Donald McCraig wrote in Washington Post Book World, "His view of the war is the standard Northern view and unexceptional." Noting the difficulty of keeping track of the many plots and characters in the novel, McCraig added, "Page by page, anecdote by anecdote, Škvorecký is a fine writer, but his structure betrays his story." According to Quill and Quire reviewer Carol Toller, "Škvorecký has an obvious passion for U.S. history and the motley assortment of characters that have shaped it. But ultimately, his exhaustive research is as frustrating as it is enlightening: the novel's romantic tale seems overburdened by the weight of historical facts and figures heaped so liberally upon it." However, Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman praised the novel as "a colossal feat of imagination and cerebration … often hilarious and consistently engrossing." A Publishers Weekly reviewer similarly concluded, "Škvorecký's stunning novel shows us the Civil War, race relations, slavery and melting-pot America in a fresh and often startling light."

Danny Smiricky returns in Two Murders in My Double Life, the only novel Škvorecký has written in English. In a pair of plots that run simultaneously, Smiricky attempts to solve a murder at politically correct Edenvale College, while he also tries to clear his wife's name when virulent anti-communists accuse her of conspiring with the police during the Communist era in Czechoslovakia. The theme that unites the two disparate stories is the perplexity of the expatriate as he seeks reconciliation with his homeland and a sense of assimilation in his new environment. Bermel observed, "Škvorecký says a native land never disappears below the émigré's horizon. For his characters, and perhaps for himself, this seems a colossal understatement. The pull of events in a land half a world away is far stronger, far more compelling and, in some universal sense, far more important than those that occur in his comfortable, cosseted new Eden."

Reviewers of Two Murders in My Double Life generally lamented Škvorecký's style. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times cited the work for "lumbering prose" and suggested that the narrative strategy "works to undermine, rather than build suspense." A Kirkus Reviews contributor likewise noted that the play-within-a-play form of the book leads to "results that fail to allay its own artificialities." Los Angeles Times Book Review reviewer Merle Rubin found the work to be "an odd book: playful in form, ruefully comic in tone, tragic in content." Rubin concluded, "Škvorecký is content to tell rather than show, to deliver wry, rather offhand comments rather than probe in depth. And so, we are left with a wistful, querulous plaint instead of a fully imagined work of fiction." In the Washington Post Book World, James Hynes wrote, "There's a general atmosphere of score-settling about both stories, the silly and the tragic, that eventually shuts out the sunlight of the author's considerable charm like an overcast sky, and vitiates the power of this book as art."

Summarizing the writer's accomplishments in all his works, Hood commented that Škvorecký "is a novelist of real stature, who writes without sentimentality about adolescence, war and death." Yet it is not plot that impressed Winch. He pointed out that Škvorecký "is a poetic writer whose work depends more on the interplay of words and images than on story-line." Maloff concluded, "We have had to wait a very long time for the … English translation and … American publication of [Škvorecký's] superlative, greatly moving works of art…. Fortunately, [his] work has lost none of its immediacy or luster, nor is it likely to for a long time to come." Škvorecký once stated "I'm an entertainer who, through no fault of mine but due to life's circumstances, occasionally had some important things to say."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 1, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 15, 1980; Volume 39, 1986; Volume 63, 1991.

Galligan, Edward L., The Truth of Uncertainty: Beyond Ideology in Science and Literature, University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Solecki, Sam, Josef Škvorecký and His Works, ECW Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.

Solecki, Sam, Prague Blues: The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký, ECW Press, 1990.

Solecki, Sam, editor, The Achievement of Josef Škvorecký, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Trensky, Paul I., The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Atlantic, March, 1979.

Best Sellers, November 1, 1970.

Booklist, December 15, 1995, p. 668.

Books in Canada, May, 1981, p. 40; February, 1983, pp. 13-14; November, 1986, pp. 17-18; June-July, 1987, p. 13; October, 1988, pp. 31-32; December, 1989, p. 9; June-July, 1990, pp. 24-26.

Canadian Forum, November, 1977, pp. 40-41; December-January, 1982–83, p. 40; August-September, 1984; April, 1994, p. 40.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1992, pp. 166-167, 212-214.

Chicago Tribune Book World, August 12, 1984; March 1, 1987.

Chicago Tribune Review, July 19, 1992, p. 8; August 21, 1994, p. 1; February 18, 1996, p. 6.

Encounter, July-August, 1985.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), November 25, 1986; November 29, 1986; June 25, 1988; November 24, 1990.

Guardian May 1, 2004, essay, Central Europe's Writers Post-Communism, p. 16.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2001, review of Two Murders in My Double Life, p. 140.

Library Journal, July, 1970; February 1, 1996, p. 100; April 15, 2001, Jim Coan, review of Two Murders in My Double Life, p. 133.

Listener, October 8, 1970; March 11, 1976; August 17, 1978.

London Review of Books, March 21, 1985, p. 19.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 1, 1984, p. 1; February 15, 1987, pp. 3, 8; August 23, 1987, p. 13; June 12, 1988; February 26, 1989, p. 1; May 10, 1991, p. 7; May 29, 2001, Merle Rubin, "Dark and Light Tales of Politics Played out in Aca-demia," p. 3.

Maclean's, December 31, 1990, p. 47; December 4, 1995, p. 76.

Nation, August 4, 1984; March 25, 1991, p. 381.

New Republic, August 27, 1984.

New Statesman, October 2, 1970, p. 426; February 5, 1988, p. 33.

New Statesman & Society, March 1, 1991, p. 37.

Newsweek, August 13, 1984.

New York Review of Books, November 19, 1970, p. 45; April 5, 1973, pp. 34-35; September 27, 1984; May 18, 1989, p. 37; April 11, 1991, pp. 45-46.

New York Times, July 23, 1984; August 9, 1984; January 31, 1987, p. 13; June 8, 2001, Michiko Kakutani, "A Murder Mystery Bound up with the Killing of Souls," p. 37.

New York Times Book Review, September 21, 1975, p. 38; January 14, 1979, pp. 7, 35; November 25, 1979, p. 46; August 19, 1984; January 12, 1986; February 22, 1987; September 6, 1987, p. 16; March 12, 1989, p. 24; February 18, 1990, p. 14; February 10, 1991, p. 1; March 10, 1991, p. 21; July 19, 1992, p. 32; August 28, 1994, p. 9; December 15, 1995, p. 32; January 21, 1996, p. 14; May 20, 2001, Neil Bermel, "Dead Man on Campus"; July 28, 2002, Laura Secor, "Occupational hazard: In Josef Skvorecky's fiction, 20th-century history interferes with chasing girls," p. 9.

Observer (London, England), March 3, 1985, p. 26; January 3, 1988, p. 23; May 7, 1989, p. 44; February 10, 1991, p. 54; May 8, 1994, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, June 22, 1984; January 26, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of The End of Lieutenant Boruvka, p. 404; December 14, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Miracle Game, p. 53; January 11, 1991, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka, p. 94 July 11, 1994, review of The Republic of Whores, p. 65; December 4, 1995, review of The Bride of Texas, p. 53; May 7, 2001, review of Two Murders in My Double Life, p. 221.

Quill and Quire, May, 1984, p. 30; November, 1988, p. 18; October, 1989, p. 23; September, 1990, pp. 60-61; December, 1995.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, summer, 1997, Sam Solecki, An Interview with Josef Škvorecký, p. 82; summer, 1997, Steve Horowitz, review of The Tenor Saxophonist's Stbory, p. 281.

San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 2002, Jonathan Cu-riel, "Reflecting on a life in exile," p. 2.

Sewanee Review, winter, 1993, pp. 107-115.

Stand, autumn, 1990, p. 76.

Time, July 30, 1984.

Times Literary Supplement, October 16, 1970; June 23, 1978; August 12, 1983; March 8, 1985, p. 256; January 23, 1987; November 30, 1990, p. 1300; March 8, 1991, p. 19; May 13, 1994, p. 20.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), June 9, 1987.

Washington Post, December 4, 1987.

Washington Post Book World, July 29, 1984; March 29, 1987; April 16, 1989, p. 8; February 17, 1991, p. 6; March 3, 1996, p. 8; May 6, 2001, James Hynes, "Paper Chases," p. 6; July 21, 2002, Zofia Smardz, review of When Eve Was Naked, p. T03.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1978; summer, 1979, p. 524; autumn, 1980, special Škvorecký issue; autumn, 1985, p. 622; summer, 1986, p. 489; autumn, 1987, pp. 652-653; summer, 1991, pp. 511-512; fall, 1996, Edward J. Czerwinski, review of The Bride of Texas, p. 988; winter, 1997, B.R. Bradbrook, review of Nove canterburske povidky a jine pribehy, p. 182.

ONLINE

Center for Book Culture, http://www.centerforbookculture.org/ (October 1, 2001), Sam Solecki, "An Interview with Josef Škvorecký."

Central European Review, http://www.ce-review.org/ (October 30, 2000), Julie Hansen, "All's Well That Ends Well: An Interview with Josef Škvorecký."

Internet Public Library Online Literary Criticism Collection, http://www.ipl.org/ (October 1, 2001), "Josef Škvorecký."

Writers' Academy of Josef Škvorecký Web site, http://www.lit.akad.cz/pages/zaklinfo.htm/ (October 16, 2004).