War with the Newts
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| War with the Newts | |
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| Author | Karel Čapek |
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| Original title | Válka s mloky |
| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Language | Czech |
| Genre(s) | Satirical Science fiction novel |
| Publication date | 1936 |
| Pages | 240 (1990 Catbird Press edition) |
War with the Newts (Válka s mloky in the original Czech), also translated as War with the Salamanders, is a satirical science fiction story by Czech author Karel Čapek.
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[edit] Connections to other works
There are obvious similarities to Čapek's earlier Rossum's Universal Robots, but also some original themes.
Robert Zubrin claims that War with the Newts partly inspired his novel The Holy Land.
[edit] As satire and social commentary
The book is a dark satire, poking fun extensively at the contemporary European politics, including colonialism, fascism and Nazism, segregation in America, and the arms race. A notable satirical point is the mentioned research of a German scientist who has determined that the German newts are actually a superior Nordic race, and that as such they have a right to expand their living space at the expense of the inferior breeds of newts.
The author's opinion of the United States' social problems also appears very pessimistic, as whenever that country is mentioned as dealing with a crisis, American mobs "lynch negroes" as scapegoats. Sometimes the newts are shown in the same manner as the blacks, as when a white woman claims to have been raped by one of them. In spite of the physical impossibility of the act, people believe her and carry out newt lynchings.
One passage, depicting the European nations willing to hand over China to the newts as long as they are themselves spared and overriding the Chinese's desperate protests, seems a premonition of Munich Agreement, a few years after the book was written - in which the writer's own country suffered a similar fate in a futile effort to appease the Nazis.
