“He loved his mother deeply, but he was ashamed to show it. That’s why he was rebellious and disobedient.”
We took a risk: deciding to read a book based on the cover, of which we had a superficial knowledge of the author. When we then saw that it was a book of short stories, not our favorite genre, we understood that the risk was complete. Yet, as often happens with texts with which we start with prejudices, we had to change our minds.
The twelve stories told are almost completely unrelated to each other, also because they come from two different collections that the author published between the 1920s and 1930s.
Don’t be fooled by the title: the stories told are not strictly detective stories, in fact in some of them the fashion of the detective era created by the pens of Arthur Conan Doyle and S. S. Van Dine is also treated with irony and sagacity (just to mention the most famous, who more than others have given shape to a certain literary genre).
The stories delve into human psychology, and interpersonal relationships, with a scale of moral values that today, unfortunately, no longer exists. Are we too melodramatic or nostalgic? Maybe, but we dare not to be after reading. What holds the stories together, beyond the writing style, is certainly Bohemia, its history, Prague, the distances between the various cities and the intellectual ferment that was born there or that was imported from neighboring countries. An ancient charm, always present.
Our favorite story? Perhaps the second (The adventures of a marriage swindler), in which we appreciate the delicacy of the pen, the precision in weighing what is not said, and the importance of honesty even in dishonesty, because everyone is born to do what they do best, for better or for worse. The relationship between the policeman and the swindler in this story hides an underlying melancholy, which brings a bitter smile to the reader’s face.
Of course, now we have entered the mindset of wanting to read other works by the same author, and on our desk we have “The white sickness” (same publishing house with the plates by Frans Masereel) looking at us…
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Karel Čapek, Storie di polizia, In Transito, Milano, 2024