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The Cowards (originally Zbabělci) is a Czech novel by Josef Škvorecký. Written in 1948–49 but not published until 1958, it is a story from the very end of the Second World War in Europe. Narrated in the first person by a Czech at the end of his teens, Danny Smiřický, it takes place in the week 4–11 May 1945 in his home town, a fictional town called Kostelec in northeast Bohemia, close to the frontier with then-German Middle Silesia (now part of Poland).

Škvorecký's prose is mostly narrative and immediate. This is interspersed with introspective passages in which Danny thinks in long sentences of many clauses representing the movement of his mind from one related thought to another.