How come I never heard of this book before? My education has obviously been seriously inadequate. Thanks to my friend Jonathan Aaron Baker for recommending it and correcting this serious gap in my reading history.
The on-line bookseller compared this novel with 1984 and Brave New World, but Capek's book is nothing like theirs in tone, although they also depict a future world where things go seriously wrong. Those other guys were deadly serious as they pointed out disturbing trends in their world. Capek is funny, satiric, and often over-the-top farcical as he points out the foibles of many different nations, including his own, Czechoslovakia in 1936. He is much more in the vein of Swift in Gulliver's Travels and of Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse 5.
The "story" goes like this: A sea captain discovers a colony of intelligent newts on an isolated island who are about the size of 10-year-old boys and who walk upright and are seemingly intelligent. He arms them with knives to defend themselves against sharks, teaches them to talk, and persuades them to find oysters containing pearls. Gradually the news of these seemingly willing workers seeps out, and a giant syndicate is formed to sell the newts to various countries for work in dredging their bays and enlarging their lands. A new industry emerges: machines and devices to help the newts in their tasks. Then the idea comes up to arm the newts with explosives to defend the sea coasts against foreign aggressors. It's a newt arms race!
The newts multiply dramatically because they are finally able to defend themselves against all their natural enemies. In fact, they find they need more "living room," more shallow water, because that is their natural habitat. The solution? Demolish continents to make more shallow water. And so the war begins.
In the process of this story, Capek manages to ridicule many nations. For example: About America, he reports that newts are lynched, because young women report they have been raped by them. About Germany, he says that that nation claims their newts are racially superior to the newts of other nations. About Czechoslovakia (his own country), he depicts the people as complacent, because they do not consider themselves in danger, since they have no seacoast. (Remember this was all written just before Hitler started his campaign for leibinstrom (living room) in World War II.)
Capek's target of satire is not communism, fascism, or democracy. His target is blind nationalism, complacency, and greed, pure greed for more profits. That's why this satire is still relevant today. Perhaps greed is with us always. And it may be our downfall. Complacency? I'm OK, so why worry about those other guys?--And nationalism? Perhaps that has been replaced by adherence to different religious views.
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