-Karel Capek

• Karel Capek (1890-1938) was a Czech novelist, dramatist, short story writer and journalist. He was educated at the universities of Prague, Berlin and Paris.

Everybody who knows anything about the subject will realize that this story could not have taken place in Czechoslovakia or in France or Germany. The reason is that these countries judges try and sentence offenders with the letter of the law and not according to their shrewd common sense and conscience.

Karel Capek’s story “The Fortune Teller” shows how Mrs Myers, an old German woman living illegally in England, makes her living by telling people’s fortunes.

This arouses the suspicion of the Detective Inspector MacLeary.

His wife dresses herself as a young girl of twenty, removes her wedding ring and assumes the name of Miss Jones to visit Mrs. Myers.

Mrs Myers gives her a pack of cards and asks her to divide it into five heaps.

Mrs Myers tells Miss Jones that she is going to get married by the end of the year to a rich man.

Mrs MacLeary returns home and tells her detective husband the whole story.

Accordingly, the magistrate Kelly summons Mrs Myers.

He fines her fifty pounds and recommends to the concerned authorities that she should be deported to Germany from where she had come.

An Australian businessman falls madly in love with Mrs MacLeary .

Thus all of Mrs Myers predictions about Mrs MacLeary turn out to be right.

There is thus irony in the story. Without really knowing much about fortune–telling Mrs Myers proves to be right, while the judge, who seems to know better about this art, turns out to be wrong.