Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most beloved and accessible works. Closely Watched Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Milos Hrma, a timid young railroad apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. Day after day as he watches trains fly by, he torments himself with the suspicion that he himself is being watched and with fears of impotency. Hrma finally affirms his manhood and, with a sense of peace and purpose he has never known before, heroically confronts a...

Inspired by Mrs. Tolstoy and Mrs. Dostoevsky, whose biographies about their husbands have now been published in Prague, Bohumil Hrabal decided to produce his own autobiographical work, ostensibly fiction, from his wife s point of view. He would write, he said, not a putdown about myself, but a little bit of how it all was, that marriage of ours, with myself as a jewel and adornment of our life together.
The task, taken up by such a rogue comic talent, could be nothing other than strangely delightful; and in "In-House Weddings," the first of the trilogy that Hrabal produced, we meet the...

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-centuryCzechoslovakia.

Originally published as "The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, "the fourteen stories in "Romance "showcase the breadth of Bohumil Hrabal s considerable gifts: his humor of the grotesque, his often surprising warmth, and his hard-edged, fast-paced style. In the story "Romance," a plumber s apprentice and a gypsy girl reach toward a tentative connection across the chasm that separates their worlds. Another unlikely love story, "World Cafeteria," features a romance between a young man whose girlfriend has just committed suicide and a bride whose husband lands in jail on their wedding night.

The tone...

Eine Chronik, ein Manifest sind die Hochzeiten im Hause. Das Buch ist autobiographisch angelegt. Der erste Teil, der dem Roman seinen Titel leiht, ist als klassische Erzählung oder Novelle geschrieben. Der zweite Teil, "Vita nuova", als ein Erzähl-Strom, dessen Strömen durch Interpunktionslosigkeit gekennzeichnet ist. Das Verfremdende, aus allen Üblichkeiten Gleitende aber ist, daß Hrabal aus der Sicht seiner Frau erzählt; sie ist es, die die Geschichten des Kennenlernens, der Werbung, des Zögerns, bis hin zur Hochzeit in ausgelassener Fröhlichkeit erzählt; ihr überläßt Hrabal,...

Der große tschechische Schriftsteller Bohumil Hrabal führte jene burleske Literatur fort, die den braven Soldaten Schwejk hervorbrachte. Dieser Roman hat seit dem ersten Erscheinen Hunderttausende Leser gefunden. §Die so komische wie melancholische Geschichte von Díté, dem kleinen Mann, der sich in kriegsbegeisterten Zeiten einzig nach Frieden und Wohlstand sehnt, gilt als Hrabals schönstes und wichtigstes Buch.§Verfilmung von Oscar-Preisträger Ji?i Menzel mit Julia Jentsch 2007 in den Kinos!

Ein alter Mann berichtet bei einer zuflligen Gelegenheit einem hbschen jungen Frulein, dem er Rosen in fremden Grten pflckt und Flugreisen verspricht, sein Leben. Er tut es unkonventionell, wie ihm die Dinge gerade in den Sinn kommen: geschwtzig und respektlos, renommierschtig und listenreich.So ist es, mein Frulein, so steht es mit der Vorliebe der Dichter fr Suff und Meditation, wenn die Verzweiflung nahe ist, ffnet sich der Himmel und eine Hand hilft den Gedanken ans Licht.

"Gaps"begins with Hrabal receiving the long anticipated advance copy of his first short story collection, "Perlicka na dne"("Pearl of the Deep"). Hrabal's career as a successful writer starts here, and the novel details his rise on the domestic front, his relationship with influential Czech artists and writers, as well as the international recognition he gains from novels such as"Closely Watched Trains."
"Gaps"is a more overtly political novel than either"In-House Weddings"or"Vita Nuova." The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent repression of artistic freedom figure...

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....