
A solitary figure sits at a desk, his breath held in the hush of a Leipzig street. The narrative drifts through his thoughts, turning ordinary sounds—the clatter of carriage wheels, the ticking of distant bells—into a fragile web of silence that seems to stretch the very fabric of time. As he watches the world outside the window, his mind teeters between the comfort of routine and the unsettling prospect of change, each moment rendered in vivid, almost tactile prose.
Gradually the scene widens, pulling the listener from the cramped interior to the bustling pavement where footsteps echo like a sudden burst of life. The story then glides into a sun‑lit forest, where memories surface amid rustling leaves and shafts of golden light. In this shifting landscape, the protagonist confronts the weight of his own longing, exploring how the external world mirrors the inner currents of yearning and doubt.
Language
de
Duration
~1 hours (63K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2016-05-23
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1890–1938
Best known for the play R.U.R., he helped give the world the word “robot” and became one of the most important Czech writers of the 20th century. His fiction mixes sharp imagination with deep concern for ordinary people, freedom, and the dangers of dehumanizing power.
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