The Cowards (1958) is Josef Skvorecky's blackly comic tale of post-war politics that was immediately banned on publication. In 1945, in Kostelec,Danny is playing saxophone for the best jazz band in Czechoslovakia. Their trumpeter has just got out of a concentration camp, their bass player is only allowed in the band since he owns the bass, and the love of Danny's life is in love with somebody else. But Danny despairs most about the bourgeoisie patriots in his town playing at revolution in the face of the approaching Red Army - not least because it ruins the band's chance of any good gigs.

Boruvka is working as a parking-lot attendant in downtown Toronto, after a spectacular escape from a Czech prison which provoked an international scandal, when a young woman is murdered, perhaps in a spy coverup. Boruvka lends his years of experience and hard-won pessimism to the neophyte Canadians on the case (including his daughter, who works for a feminist detective agency). By having this story--his most riveting and funniest yet--narrated by the murdered woman's brother, an amiable WASP, Josef Skvorecky sets the Old World against the New, and pokes fun at the absurdities on both sides of our cultural divide. In the end, as an old war crime is avenged, the narrator discovers the source of Lieutenant Boruvka's mournful demeanour.

Set in Czechoslovakia amidst the ruthless background of political repression, this memoir and ten companion tales tell of romance, subversion and artistic hunger, and of a regime that cast a terrifying shadow on some of the brightest hearts and minds of post-war Europe.

This energetic and hilarious novel is made even more important by the current final thawing of the long, Communist winter in Czechoslovakia. Moving between 1948, when our hero Danny Smiricky falls asleep in church while a miraculous event occurs, and 1968, when he observes the miracle of Prague Spring, The Miracle Game is a sharp look at the strange, sad, and silly things people do to survive.

A pensive, conscience-stricken man driven to melancholy by the fiendish truths of murder, the Czechoslovak policeman Lieutenant Boruvka is a notable new member of the brilliant-eccentric-detective literary tradition. Twelve bizarre tales--to be read as a continuous account--involve theatrical people, musicians, and mountaineers, who lead the lieutenant, and the reader, on an ingenious chase through the paths of crime.

"A genuinely innovative, brain-teaser of a novel that pokes fun at American pulp fiction. . . . Skvorecky is a skillful writer with an international range." —Publishers Weekly

A clergyman named Ronald A. Knox once set forth a set of rules for writing detective fiction. In ten new stories (two featuring Lieutenant Boruvka), a crime occurs that violates one of Father Knox's rules, thus serving up a double challenge: Who dunnit? and Which rule was broken?

"Ten more mystery stories by the gifted Czech novelist. . . . Offbeat . . . tongue-in-cheek entertainment for aficionados of classic puzzlers in the Ellery Queen tradition—especially those who'll also appreciate Skvorecky's darkish, edgy texture." —Kirkus Reviews

"[Skvorecky] is a magnificent writer and a hilarious observer of human folly. . . . Mystery fans who thrive on puzzles are nicely served. But those who read for style and characterization—and they are legion—are the real winners here." —Katrine Ames, Newsweek

"Dvorak in Love will charm your socks off." —Jim Gustafson, Detroit News

Here is a wonderfully imagined picture of a little-known period in American musical history. In 1892, at the height of his prodigious powers, Antonin Dvorak was persuaded to leave his native Bohemia to come to New York to be director of the National Conservatory for Music. In this exuberant novel, Josef Skvorecky tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair with young America, the anthem of which is his famous Symphony in E Minor, "From the New World."

A perfect match of writer and subject, this is a marvelous novel—a "light-hearted dream" Skvorecky calls it—filled with artistry and music and brio.

"A stunning achievement." —Edward Rothstein, The New Republic

"An exuberant tour de force." —James Marcus, The Nation

Eva Adam, a nightclub singer and garrulous meddler in other people's affairs, tours worldwide, each stop comprising a single story and a single crime, and each story violates one of Father Ronald A. Knox's rules for writing detective fiction.