Saturnin

Jirotka Zdenek

Not for sale in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic!

On its initial publication in Czech in 1942, Saturnin was a best seller, its gentle satire offering an unexpected – if temporary – reprieve from the grim reality of the German occupation. In the years since, the novel has been hailed as a classic of Czech literature, and this translation makes it available to English-language readers for the first time – which is entirely appropriate, for author Zdenek Jirotka clearly modeled his light comedy on the English masters Jerome K. Jerome and P. G. Wodehouse. The novel's main character, Saturnin, a "gentleman's gentleman" who obviously owes a debt to Wodehouse's beloved Jeeves, wages a constant battle to protect his master from romantic disaster and intrusive relatives, such as Aunt Catherine, the "Prancing Dictionary of Slavic Proverbs".Saturnin" will warm the heart of any fan of literary comedy.

About the Author

Zdenek Jirotka (1911-2003) was a Czech author of radio plays, novels, and short stories.

Reviews

"'Saturnin'... has a delicious dry humor and an imaginative flair that makes it much more than just the 'Czech Jeeves'... The writing is rich in homespun wisdom and casual asides that take on a life of their own, leading the reader up charming byways of irrelevance... There are a surprising number of belly-laughs for a novel that is more than half a century old... This first English translation is long overdue" – Times Literary Supplement

"Written at a time of when Czechoslovakia was deep in the grip of the Nazi occupation: One form of resistance was to put the world created by invasion out of your mind and create another. Was it, perhaps, a Woodhousian influence – a reluctance to acknowledge the evil of the outside world?" – Quarterly Journal of the P. G. Woodhouse Society

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