The virile Manya is contrasted with the titular miner, who returns home from America, in Hordubal, the first part of a trilogy that also includes Meteor and An Ordinary Life.
He wrote a collection recounting the lives of such characters as Don Juan and Alexander the Great, while in another work he described eating lettuce three times a day to avoid being wasteful and laments the destruction of lilies by too much rain.  Both Apocryphal Tales and The Gardener's Year preceded his response to Nazism, The White Plague.  Early in his career he wrote the mystery, Tales from Two Pockets, and, along with his brother, published symbolist pieces like Insect Play.  The virile Manya is contrasted with the titular miner, who returns home from America, in Hordubal, the first part of a trilogy that also includes Meteor and An Ordinary Life. Yet his best known characters remain Dr. Gall and Dr. Mercier, whose attempts at creating class of servants dooms mankind. For ten points, identify this Czech author of the early science fiction classics War with the Newts and R.U.R.
He wrote a collection recounting the lives of such characters as Don Juan and Alexander the Great, while in another work he described eating lettuce three times a day to avoid being wasteful and laments the destruction of lilies by too much rain.  
Karel Capek