This Rabelaisian tale is composed of a single rambling sentence by the narrator, a shoemaker nearing 70 years of age. One drunken thought triggers another, as he delivers a lengthy monologue to six sunbathing women."

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (Vintage Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Bohumil Hrabal

Literary

Vintage Classic

Closely Watched Trains

Penguin??Books

Chronicles the experiences of Ditie, who rises from busboy to hotel owner in World War II Prague, and whose life is shaped by the fate of his country before, during, and after the conflict

I Served the King of England (English and Czech Edition)

Genre Fiction

Harcourt, Brace. Jovanovich

Cutting It Short

Classics

PENGUIN POPULAR CLASSICS

In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia. First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, "I Served the King of England" is "an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel" ("The New York Times"), telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history.

I Served the King of England (Picador Books)

Picador

For gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka's gross misuse of the station's official stamps upon the telegraphist's anatomy. Beside these, Milos's part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair. CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism which fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of today.

Closely Observed Trains

Contemporary

Abacus Books

Too Loud a Solitude

Abacus Little, Brown

The first English-language translation of a novel written in the 1970s by the Czech author of "Closely Observed Trains" and "Too Loud a Solitude". By turns sad and funny, it is set in a small provincial town in Bohemia between the wars, and reflects the passing of an age upon a community.

The Little Town Where Time Stood Still

Time Warner Books/Abacus UK

From the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers.

Die Katze Autitschko

Insel, Frankfurt

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Books by Bohumil Hrabal