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    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy
    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy
    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy
    Ebook98 pages33 minutes

    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy

    By Karel Čapek

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    About this ebook

    This vintage book contains Karel Capek's delightful children's tale "Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy". It is a heart-warming story about Dashenka the fox terrier who grows before the reader's eyes in a series of cartoons and photographs. Dashenka remains one of the most popular children's stories, and makes for ideal bedtime reading. Karel Capek (1890 - 1938) was a famous Czech writer of the early-twentieth century. He worked as a playwright, publisher, literary reviewer, and art critic, but is most remembered for his science fiction writing. We are republishing this antiquarian text now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateApr 10, 2014
    ISBN9781473392717
    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy
    Author

    Karel Čapek

    Karel Capek was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia. He was interested in visual art as a teenager and studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague. During WWI he was exempt from military service because of spinal problems and became a journalist. He campaigned against the rise of communism and in the 1930s his writing became increasingly anti-fascist. He started writing fiction with his brother Josef, a successful painter, and went on to publish science-fiction novels, for which he is best known, as well as detective stories, plays and a singular book on gardening, The Gardener’s Year. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and the Czech PEN Club created a literary award in his name. He died of pneumonia in 1938.

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    • 5/5
      This is an English language translation of a Czech author (Karel Capek), who tells you all about a puppy born at his home, and how it grows into an actual dog. Complete with drawings by brother Capek, and a bunch of photos at the end. The funniest part is where the author itemizes the cost of replacing all the items damaged by the puppy!

    Book preview

    Dashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy - Karel Čapek

    DASHENKA or the

    Life of a Puppy

    Dashenka is born

    CHAPTER ONE

    WHEN it was first born it was just a white bit of nothing: you could easily hold it in your hand; but since it had a pair of tiny black ears and a wee little tail, we had to admit that it was a puppy, and because we wanted it to be a girl, we called it Dashenka.

    While she was a white bit of nothing, she was quite blind, without any eyes at all; and as for her puny legs, well she had two pairs of something which if you had good-will you could call legs. And because we had good-will, they were little legs, even if they were still almost useless: oh no, she couldn’t stand up on them, they were too weak and limp, and as for walking, my dear, that was still more difficult. When Dashenka really got down to it (as a matter of fact she didn’t get down to it, she rolled her sleeves up) (more strictly speaking, she didn’t even roll her sleeves up, she only, as it were, spat in her hands) (of course you must understand that she couldn’t spit in her hands, because she still didn’t know how to spit, and she had such tiny little paws that she was certain to miss them), in short, when Dashenka put herself out to do it properly she managed in half a day to roll as far as from her mammy’s hind leg to her front one, and while on the way, she fed three times, and slept twice. For right from birth she knew how to sleep and eat; nobody had to teach her that; and so she did it with heart and soul the whole day long, and, it seems to me, at night, when no one was looking, she slept just as conscientiously as she did in the day-time—for she was a very industrious puppy.

    The second day

    Besides that she knew how to whine, but I can’t draw you a picture of a puppy whining, and I can’t show you, because my voice isn’t thin enough. Also from the day she was born Dashenka knew how to smack her lips, while she sucked mammy’s milk, but she could do nothing else; so you see you couldn’t talk much with her at first, but for her mammy (she’s called Iris, and is a wire-haired fox terrier) it was quite enough; the whole day long she had something to talk about and to whisper to her pet, Dashenka, and she snuffled round her, kissed and licked her, washed and cleaned her with her tongue, combed, patted and nursed her, gave her milk, hugged and watched her, offering her own fluffy little body for a pillow, and then, I say, Dashenka did have a nice nap! Now that you know is called maternal love, and with your mammies it’s just the same; of course, you knew that already.

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