Un capitan descubre una especie de salamandras inteligentes en la costa de Sumatra. Les enseña a hablar y con el tiempo se convierten en mano de obra barata para los empresarios de Occidente Pero llega un momento en que ya no estan dispuestas a aceptar esta situacion y reclaman el lugar que creen que les corresponde en la escala evolutiva. Escrita en 1936, esta satira ironiza sobre el capitalismo sin escrupulos, la explitacion laboral, la carrera armamentistica y el fascismo. / An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of anti-utopian fantasy that is possibly the equal of Orwell's Animal Farm. Capek writes of an avaricious Dutch seaman who discovers a race of bipedal and intelligent newts in Sumatra that is initially lauded as the equal of the human race, but that is subsequently conscripted into the service of man and then... By turns hilarious and grim, but consistently and scathingly insightful into the nature of human nature, and a book that you simply must read....

From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek comes this beautifully written and marvelously apt account of the trials and tribulations of the gardener’s life. First published in Prague in 1929, The Gardener’s Year combines a richly comic portrait of life in the garden, narrated month by month, with a series of delightful illustrations by the author’s older brother and collaborator, Josef. Capek’s gardeners—all too human, despite their lofty aspirations—often look the fool, whether they be found sopping wet, victims of the cobralike water hose, or hunched over, hands immersed in the soil, “presenting their rumps to the splendid azure sky.” In their repeated folly, Capek gives us not only cause for laughter but also, in the end, “testimony of the imperishable and miraculous optimism of the human race.”

This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorialist and the author of Making Hay and The Last Fine Time....