Background
By the early 1930’s, the author's country of Czechoslovakia was in a precarious political situation. Čapek became concerned by the developments of National Socialism in Germany and the rise of the Soviet states to the east. He began writing his Apocryphal Tales, short allegorical pieces that picked up on the anxiety felt by many Czechoslovakians at the time. These provided the impetus for War with the Newts, which was written over four months in the summer of 1935.
He describes the initial thought of the novel as, “you mustn’t think that the evolution that gave rise to our form of life was the only evolutionary process on the planet.” On August 27, 1935, Čapek wrote, “Today I completed the last chapter of my utopian novel. The protagonist of this chapter is nationalism. The content is quite simple: the destruction of the world and its people. It is a disgusting chapter, based solely on logic. Yet it had to end this way. What destroys us will not be a cosmic catastrophe but mere reasons of state, economics, prestige, etc.”
Read more about this topic: War With The Newts
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