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Hanta 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.
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.
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.
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he
spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning
to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made
his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he
was ranked with Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek, and Milan Kundera as
among the nation's greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal's
fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of
intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal
perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts
and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal's
Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet
invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected
by Communist censorship during the 1970s. This edition features the
original, uncensored versions of those stories.
Fiction. Translation from the Czech by James Naughton. Bohumil
Hrabal's TOTAL FEARS is a series of letters Hrabal wrote during the
collapse of the Czech communist regime from 1989-1992. The letters
were what Hrabal referred to as his "lyrical reportage" and were
addressed to an American student who went by the alias Dubenka. The
letters follow a free-associative logic and are sometimes
imaginary, making the book a testament to memory with "quick,
rambling, spoken but purposeful writing" --The TLS.
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All My Cats (Paperback)
Bohumil Hrabal
1
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R233
R188
Discovery Miles 1 880
Save R45 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'One of the greatest European prose writers' Philip Roth In the
autumn of 1965, Bohumil Hrabal bought a weekend cottage in the
countryside east of Prague. There, until his death, he tended to an
ever-growing, unruly community of cats. This is his confessional,
tender and shocking meditation on the joys and torments of his life
with them; how he became increasingly overwhelmed by the demands of
the things he loved, even to the brink of madness. 'Dark and
strange ... It begins with warmth and fluffiness, but soon descends
into Dostoevskian horror' Daily Telegraph 'The Czech master exposed
the animal within us' New Yorker
A classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour,
humanity and heroism from one of the best Czech writers For
twenty-two-year-old Milos, bumbling apprentice at a sleepy Czech
railway station, life is full of worries: his burdensome virginity,
his love for the pretty conductor Masha, the scandalous goings-on
in the station master's office. Beside them, the part he will come
to play against the occupying Germans seems a simple affair, in
Bohumil Hrabal's touching, absurd masterpiece of humour, humanity
and heroism. Closely Watched Trains, which became the award-winning
Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a masterpiece that
fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech
writers of the twentieth century.
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.
'Folks, life is beautiful! Bring on the drinks, I'm sticking around
till I'm ninety! Do you hear?' A young boy grows up in a sleepy
Czech community where little changes. His raucous, mischievous
Uncle Pepin came to stay with the family years ago, and never left.
But the outside world is encroaching on their close-knit town -
first in the shape of German occupiers, and then with the new
Communist order. Elegiac and moving, Bohumil Hrabal's gem-like
portrayal of the passing of an age is filled with wit, life and
tenderness. 'What is unique about Hrabal is his capacity for joy'
Milan Kundera 'Even in a town where nothing happens, Hrabal's
meticulous and exuberant fascination with the human voice insists
that, as long as there's still breath in a body, life is endlessly
eventful' Independent
Novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914-97) was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia,
and spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before
turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly
made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death
he was ranked with Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek, and Milan Kundera
as among the nation's greatest twentieth-century writers. Hrabal's
fiction blends tragedy with humor and explores the anguish of
intellectuals and ordinary people alike from a slightly surreal
perspective. His work ranges from novels and poems to film scripts
and essays. Rambling On is a collection of stories set in Hrabal's
Kersko. Several of the stories were written before the 1968 Soviet
invasion of Prague but had to be reworked when they were rejected
by Communist censorship during the 1970s. This edition features the
original, uncensored versions of those stories.
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Mr Kafka (Paperback)
Bohumil Hrabal; Translated by Paul Wilson
1
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R291
R235
Discovery Miles 2 350
Save R56 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Enter the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague, the steelworks run by
singed men, the covered market that smells of new-born babes, the
cacophonous open-air dance hall. Mr Kafka is avoiding his
landlady's blueberry wine breath, a stonemason witnesses the
destruction of a monument to Stalin he risked his life to build,
and factory men strain to catch a glimpse of a beautiful bathing
murderess. In these newly discovered stories, Hrabal captures men
and women in an eerily beautiful nightmare and their spirit in all
its misery and splendour.
Rake, drunkard, aesthete, gossip, raconteur extraordinaire: the
narrator of Bohumil Hrabal's rambling, rambunctious masterpiece
"Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age" is all these and more.
Speaking to a group of sunbathing women who remind him of lovers
past, this elderly roue tells the story of his life--or at least
unburdens himself of a lifetime's worth of stories. Thus we learn
of amatory conquests (and humiliations), of scandals both private
and public, of military adventures and domestic feuds, of what
things were like "in the days of the monarchy" and how they've
changed since. As the book tumbles restlessly forward, and the
comic tone takes on darker shadings, we realize we are listening to
a man talking as much out of desperation as from exuberance.
Hrabal, one of the great Czech writers of the twentieth century,
as well as an inveterate haunter of Prague's pubs and football
stadiums, developed a unique method which he termed "palavering,"
whereby characters gab and soliloquize with abandon. Part drunken
boast, part soul-rending confession, part metaphysical poem on the
nature of love and time, this astonishing novel (which unfolds in a
single monumental sentence) shows why he has earned the admiration
of such writers as Milan Kundera, John Banville, and Louise
Erdrich.
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