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A review by screen_memory
War with the Newts by Karel Čapek
5.0
This book was a more entertaining read than I was anticipating. I never approach a book expecting to be entertained, and it certainly is not often that a book satisfies such an aim, but Čapek's War With the Newts did just that.
I will admit to my fondness for the novel of ideas, and even Kundera and Nabokov, two masters of the farce and absurd who declared their opposition to ideas, presents the reader with a myriad of lofty ideas throughout their novels. This novel, however, is not at all such a novel of ideas.
A portion of the novel is told through newspaper articles (reflecting Čapek's employment as a journalist), and simply narrates the course of the Newts' evolution from an uncivilized sea-dwelling race to - after they are bought, sold, and traded by business and military powers the world over - hyper-intelligent scholars, soldiers, and laborers whose over-abundant population threatens the surface world.
The final pages of the novel are highly reminiscent of Vonneguts' Galapagos or Cat's Cradle as the characters reflect on the world as they once knew it devolving into an inhabitable wasteland. . .
I will admit to my fondness for the novel of ideas, and even Kundera and Nabokov, two masters of the farce and absurd who declared their opposition to ideas, presents the reader with a myriad of lofty ideas throughout their novels. This novel, however, is not at all such a novel of ideas.
A portion of the novel is told through newspaper articles (reflecting Čapek's employment as a journalist), and simply narrates the course of the Newts' evolution from an uncivilized sea-dwelling race to - after they are bought, sold, and traded by business and military powers the world over - hyper-intelligent scholars, soldiers, and laborers whose over-abundant population threatens the surface world.
The final pages of the novel are highly reminiscent of Vonneguts' Galapagos or Cat's Cradle as the characters reflect on the world as they once knew it devolving into an inhabitable wasteland. . .