It is a dystopian science fiction novel, or you can possibly say alternative history, since the only sci-fi element of the book is the discovery of a new, intelligent race of water inhabiting creatures that are for their similarities classified as a new breed of newts.

The book was written in 1930's and the story (even though it isn't specified) starts in 30's as well, and then spans several decades (again not specified). It is divided into three books that deal with the discovery and the evolution of newts, and finally with their conflict with humans.

Although the title of the book is War with the Newts only the last couple of chapters actually deal with this war. It focuses more on their evolution instead. This evolution is artificially accelerated by human influence, they (/we) find this new intelligent race useful and exploit them as cheap workforce.

In this book, ?apek explores, usually with satirical point of view, themes like slavery, piracy, racism, colonialism, arms race, and many others. ?apek was one of the most notable pre-war Czech critics of Nazism, and it can also be seen in this book, when, for example, a German scientist makes a discovery that German Newts are a special Nordic kind of Newts and superior to others, even though all Newts are the same. However, what I found the most interesting in this book were the similarities between the interwar society and our modern society. Sure, there are differences, but at times, it was almost chilling how similar they are, especially in relation with themes.

Another interesting thing about this book is its style, because it changes. Most of the time, ?apek uses normal literal narrative style, but at times it changes into journalist, or historian styles. The whole second book, for example, is written like a thesis, along with footnotes and citations of fictional newspaper articles and other fictional documents. And the story doesn’t suffer from it, on the contrary, it makes it more intriguing.

It has been more than 70 years since ?apek’s death, so his works can now be downloaded for free (at least in the Czech Republic). However, I would suggest reading a "normal, printed" book because of all those citations and footnotes. In my copy of the book, they are printed in form of old newspaper clippings of various fonts and styles, and it’s really quite nicely done. I don’t know if it would be done similarly in an e-book copy, and I think that the book would lose something without it.