The Engineer of Human Souls

Abstract

The Engineer of Human Souls (Příběh inženýra lidských duší) may be read as a sequel to Škvorecký’s two other major novels, The Cowards and Miracle. The Czech version was published in 1977, while the English translation did not appear until 1984. It became an immediate critical success, particularly in the United States, where Czech émigré fiction had recently started to receive considerable attention. The title of the novel is an ironic reference to the notorious definition of a writer in Communist society according to the tenets of Stalinist aesthetics: the writer’s work is expected to perform a propagandistic and didactic function. But the title also indirectly suggests the biographical or quasi-biographical nature of the novel, which is narrated in the first person by the author’s surrogate, Danny Smiřický, who is already familiar to the reader from earlier works. The connection between the narrator and the author is implied in a number of ways. Like Škvorecký, Danny is an émigré Czech writer; he lives in Toronto and is employed as a professor of literature at Edanvale College whereas Škvorecký was at the time teaching in the same city at Erindale College. As in Miracle, an informed reader will find numerous parallels between the fictitious characters and authentic individuals, but the relationship between fact and fiction is of much less interest than in Škvorecký’s previous novels. The Engineer is not a roman à clef, not even in the limited sense of Miracle.