KRAKATIT
Krakatit is a most powerful explosive, a hundredweight of it would nearly blow this good old world to atoms. It is not named because of the vogue for words beginning with K, Krakatit for crack at it, but from the volcano Krakatoa, ashes from which the geography text-books tell us, drifted across the Pacific to San Francisco when it exploded in 1883. What happened when the only few grams of Krakatit in existence were stolen is the them of Karel Capek’s most extraordinary romance “Krakatit” (The MacMilan Company of Canada.)
Karel Capek is a most ingenious writer. His play R.U.R. made him famous. Here automatic men are made to perform the menial services of a future time. These robots come to life, however, and a crisis ensues. Karel Capet has recently been in England and his book of Impressions Letters from England, (Gundy), is one of uncanny insight and delightful naviete combined.
Prokop, the discoverer of Krakatit, is a remarkable man. He has a demonic face and he needs it for he has to go through two most critical illnesses, lose fingers in every other chapter, engage in itvely(illegible text) scraps iln(illegible text) the alternate chapters, fall in love madly several times, once with a princess who leads him a danse macabre, and this is but a fraction of his experiences.
Strange as the novel is, it is more than a scientific romance in the manner of the Wells of The Time Machine. It is a commentary upon life and it is one man’s pigrimage from chaotic uncertainty as to the question of the catechism “What is the chief end of man?” to a solution—for him. We leave him thus, “Prokop fell into a sweet and healing sleep free from all dreams,” and for the relief of the apprehensive reader be it said. The few grams had been exploded carrying with them “a most vile congregation of vapourous Reds and Prokop found on awakening the formula and the method of making Krakatit. A remarkable book!
