Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek was born in Bohemia on 9 January 1890 and became a Czech writer, playwright, critic and journalist shaped by American pragmatic liberalism. His 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) introduced "robot" to global vocabulary, and his 1936 novel War with the Newts extended his science fiction into darker territory. He campaigned for free expression and opposed both fascism and communism as they rose across Europe, writing politically charged works that addressed the social turmoil directly. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, he never received it, though the Karel Čapek Prize now honors writers who reinforce democratic and humanist values, and he helped establish the Czechoslovak PEN Club as part of International PEN. He died on 25 December 1938 from a lifelong medical condition, just as the war he'd seen coming arrived, and his literary reputation solidified only after Europe emerged from the rubble.