The Gardener's Year

"This very entertaining volume with its delightfully humorous pictures should be read by all gardeners." — Nature
"Mr. Čapek writes with sympathy, understanding, and humor." — The New York Times
"Has a mellowness and a charm that give it a high place in the humorous literature of gardening … will delight the amateur gardener, and indeed everyone else." — Saturday Review
The creator of this book is best known internationally as the author of R.U.R., the science-fiction play that introduced the term "robot" to the world. Karel Čapek's satiric gifts take a different turn in this impishly comic book, which recounts the trials, labors, joys, and meditations of the amateur gardener.
Rather than a how-to book, Čapek's volume offers a lighthearted mock-treatise on the pains and rewards of tending a small and resistant garden plot. From January to December, the author and his brother, illustrator Josef Čapek, trace the vagaries of the amateur horticulturist's year, with brief side notes on seeds, the soil, plants, the beauties of autumn, and other aspects of gardening. Fifty-nine delightful drawings complement this book, which will amuse readers with and without green thumbs.

Czech writer Karel Čapek (1890–1938) is best known as the author of R.U.R., the play that coined the term "robot" and a seminal work of science fiction. Ardently opposed to fascism and communism,  Čapek was an active journalist as well as a versatile writer whose works encompassed novels, modern fairy tales, detective stories, and translations of French poetry.
Poet and painter Josef  Čapek (1887–1945) frequently collaborated with his brother Karel in the writing of plays and short stories. Upon Germany's 1939 invasion of Czechoslovakia, his outspoken opposition to Nazism led to his arrest and imprisonment, and he died within days of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.