- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Canada (Nov 8 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 039428058X
- ISBN-13: 978-0394280585
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #302,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“An important piece of history is marvelously recorded here, and anyone who wants to know how it felt to be young, idealistic, and innocent at the end of the war. . . should read The Cowards.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“I have enjoyed The Cowards as much as any novel I have read during the last year. A very funny and very sad story.”
—Graham Greene
“It's funny, on the mark, and viciously faithful in its portrayal of the 1950s.”
—Daily News
—The Times Literary Supplement
“I have enjoyed The Cowards as much as any novel I have read during the last year. A very funny and very sad story.”
—Graham Greene
“It's funny, on the mark, and viciously faithful in its portrayal of the 1950s.”
—Daily News
Book Description
Girls, jazz, politics, the golden dreams and black comedy of youth--these are the compelling ingredients of The Cowards.
May 1945, a small town in Czechoslovakia. The Germans are withdrawing. The Red Army is advancing. And Danny Smiricky is being forced to grow up fast. Observing with contempt the antics of the town's citizens playing it safe, he adopts the role first of reluctant conscript, then of dashing partisan.
The Cowards is the story of an uncomplicated, talented youth caught up in momentous historic events who refuses to be bored to death by politics--or to lie down and die without a fight.
--
May 1945, a small town in Czechoslovakia. The Germans are withdrawing. The Red Army is advancing. And Danny Smiricky is being forced to grow up fast. Observing with contempt the antics of the town's citizens playing it safe, he adopts the role first of reluctant conscript, then of dashing partisan.
The Cowards is the story of an uncomplicated, talented youth caught up in momentous historic events who refuses to be bored to death by politics--or to lie down and die without a fight.
--
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Zbabelci, Oct 5 1998
By Miriam Fitting (fitting@w-link.net) - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Cowards (Paperback)
This semi-autobiographical novel is the first in a series by Czech-cum-Canadian author Josef Skvorecky that charts the life of Danny Smiricky, a Czech sometimes-saxophonist and full-time womanizer. The story opens during WWII in German-occupied Kostelec, a town not far from Prague. The way Smiricky tells it, the war and the occupation are minor hardships and major bores; what really matters is the pursuit of his two true loves: jazz and women. Like most egotistical men, Danny is most charming in his youth, and this novel displays him at his finest. His exchanges with friends and musings on the unattainable Irena are entertaining, and his rhapsodies on a solo with his jazz band and the fit of the ever-tantalizing Mitza's uniform go even further to make up for long stretches of disaffected self-indulgence. As a portrait of everyday life during wartime, the novel is excellent. Skvorecky captures the sort of daily details that bring a historical event to life in an intimate and personal way. One just wishes that the main character didn't block the view quite so often.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The farce of patriotism, Jan 12 2003
By IVAN JIMENEZ CORREAL - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Cowards (Hardcover)
This is one of the several novels by Joseph Skvorecky which presents the daily life of his alter ego Daniel Smiricky. "The Cowards" is not about coward people, it is about local people in the small town of Kostelec (north Bohemian Nachod)whose aim is to survive living their ordinary lives in the last days of the Nazi Protectorate, seven days of May, from the fourth to the eleventh May 1945. The Germans are quickly withdrawing from the Eastern front as fast as the Red Army advances towards Central Europe, while the people of Kostelec prepare a "revolution" against the Nazi opressors to welcome finally the Soviet troops who will "liberate" them.The main intention of the author, from my point of view, is to remark that both the revolution and the liberation are a complete farce, that History, as written in books, is a great deal of falsified propaganda. Danel Smiricky and his friends of the jazz band are by no means interested in heroic feats nor care about patriotism but about girls and music.
But Skvorecky gives a moving view of his characters and events, an intimate vision, tender, dramatic, satyrical, funny, critical, full of humour and nostalgia, as only Czech writers can, because I have always found that Czech writers have the incredible ability to combine the trivial with the deep, the ordinary with the remarkable, the comical with the dramatic, the harsh with the tender.
Of course, this novel, being one of the earliest by Skvorecky, lacks the maturity of "The Engineer of Human Souls"; nevertheless, it is worth while to read it and realize that nothing is what it seems and that History is subject to countless manipulations.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A small town outside Prague in 1945,, Nov 1 2010
By Kiwifunlad - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Cowards (Paperback)
This novel was written in the late 1940's by a respected Czech author when aged 24. The pivotal event in the novel, set in a small town north of Prague, covers the week in the township as the Germans are leaving and the arrival of the Russians. The main character is a young man, Danny Smiricky, who is experiencing all the emotions of love, friendship and adventure during this momentous week in the history of the Czech Republic. The translation is a very readable account centering on the young men as they flex their muscles in excited anticipation of the forthcoming liberation. The novel is very good at describing various flawed characters of the township as they try to reorganise their township without the imposed control of the German occupation.
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