Josef and Karel Capek were the best known literary figures of liberated Czechoslovakia after 1918. After the success of R.U.R. (Rossums' Universal Robots, 1920), the brothers collaborated in their best-known work, The Insect Play (1921). Both plays are satires depicting the horrors of a regimented technical world and the terrible end of the populace if they fail to rise against their oppressors. They reflect the world in which the Capeks lived and give a commentary on its grosser follies.