“Petrklíče” and “Hanuman” are collections of lovely fairy tales and plays in Čech’s most delightful verse. “Modlitby k Neznámému” (Prayers to the Unknown) is a series of meditations in pantheistic vein on the mysteries of the universe. “Zpěvník Jana Buriana” (The Song Book of Jan Burian) solves monarchistic tendency with the one true answer—democracy. “Písně Otroka” (Songs of a Slave), of which some fifty editions have been published, not only in Bohemia, but in the United States as well, represent, through the symbolism of oriental slavery, the modern bondmen who are in mental, moral, political and industrial subjection.
Of his larger prose works, the novels “Kandidát Nesmrtelnosti” (A Candidate for Immortality) and “Ikaros” are best known, but humor and satire, together with genuine story-telling ability, hold the reader far more tensely in his delicious “Výlet Páně Broučkův do Měsíce” (Mr. Brouček’s Trip to the Moon) and in his ten or twelve collections of short stories, arabesques and travel sketches. The story “Foltýn’s Drum” is selected from Čech’s “Fourth Book of Stories and Arabesques.”
