Gardener's Year (Paperback: Modern Library: 144 pages)

Enhanced Muze Note

The humour of Capek's book would alone distinguish it from similarly titled volumes on sale at garden centres....As with most of Capek's writings, the humour of THE GARDENER'S YEAR combines with seriousness of purpose. Had it been written ten or twenty years later, the book would surely have been received as a metaphor for resistance to Nazi or Stalinist oppression: with the sturdy gardener symbolic of the individual who will not bow down....

Enhanced Muze Note

THE GARDENER'S YEAR...captures wonderfully the absurd spectacle of gardening. He plays the bemused observer in this little book, but he cannot hide his obvious affection for the simple suburban garden or his understanding of how important the sanctity of the garden was to his countrymen.

Enhanced Muze Note

Karel Capek was a playwright in the theater of the absurd....He brought that sense of absurdity to the garden....