January Literary Birthdays

KAREL CAPEK
January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938

Karel Capek was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. He introduced and made popular the frequently used international word robot, which first appeared in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921. Karel named his brother Josef Capek as the true inventor of the word robot.

Some of his works:
The Absolute at Large
Apocryphal Tales
Krakatit
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
Tales from Two Pockets
Talks With T.G. Masaryk
Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Lifes
Toward the Radical Center
War With the Newts

Search for his books


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English writer and interpreter of Zen Buddhism Alan Watts (1915)
NYC novelist E.L. Doctorow (1931)
English physicist and author Stephen Hawking (1942)
Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist Karel Capek (1890)
French writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908)
South African writer Alan Paton (1903)
San Francisco writer and socialist Jack London (1876)
Japanese novelist (born Kyoto) Haruki Murakami (1949)
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Scottish's national poet Robert Burns (1759)
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