His first novel, "The Cowards" (1958), was banned because it did not agree with the government about the communist resistance to the Nazis in the war. The book did not talk about heroism and sacrifice. The characters are interested in girls and jazz. He was about to publish his second novel, "The Tank Battalion" (1968), when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. Skvorecky and his wife left the country and moved to Canada where he had been offered a job at the University of Toronto. With his wife they set up their own publishing company. They reprinted "The Tank Battalion". Copies were sold to Czech people living in exile. Some copies were smuggled back into Czechoslovakia. His publishing company specialized in printing books by banned Czech writers.