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

Literature & Fiction

Hrabal, Bohumil

Contemporary

VINTAGE BOOKS @

Vintage Classic

An old man, a shoemaker who once wore a pince-nez and carried a stick with a silver mounting because he wanted to look like a composer, tells the story of his life to six youn, beautiful women basking in the sun. One drunken thought triggers another. Amorous conquests alternate with sundry mishaps and in the exuberant telling acquire the same weight and substance as earth-shattering events. To say nothing of the historical perspective, which the self-styled "engineer of human feet" bends at random to suit his mood. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age displays the inimitable Czech master at his playful best.

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: A Novel

Heim, Michael Henry

Harcourt

Too Loud a Solitude

This parable of censorship and the modern state centers on Hanta, a trash collector whose habit of salvaging and reading discarded books has brought him both the richness of the classics and the ridicule of his boss

A grandiose old shoemaker tells his story to a circle of young women basking in the sun, a tale of amorous conquests and drunken misadventures

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: A Novel (Harvest Book)

Hantá rescues books from the jaws of his compacting press and carries them home. Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera calls “our very best writer today,” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word. Translated by Michael Henry Heim.

Humor & Satire

HarperVia

A close watch on the trains; (Cape editions)

JONATHAN CAPE.

Heim, Michael Henry, (Transl.)

Andre Deutsch

Set in a small town in Czechoslovakia at the end of the War, this is the story of the wayward wife of a brewery manager. Maryska is wild and exuberant and almost impossible to control - like a charming but devilish child. The author also wrote "Closely Observed Trains" and "Too Loud a Solitude".

The Little Town Where Time Stood Still

Literary

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