Closely Watched Trains

Bohumil Hrabal

199 Kč

DMOC: 249 Kč

-20% Momentálně nedostupné

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.

Review

Hrabal bounces and floats. His mode is a sort of dancing realism, somewhere between fairy tale and satire. He is a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail. We should read him (Julian Barnes)

Hrabal, to my mind, is one of the greatest European prose writers (Philip Roth)

One of the most authentic incarnations of magical Prague; an incredible union of earthy humour and baroque imagination... What is unique about Hrabal is his capacity for joy (Milan Kundera)

Hrabal's comedy is completely paradoxical. Holding in balance limitless desire and limited satisfaction, it is both rebellious and fatalistic, restless and wise (James Wood London Review of Books)

A poignant, humorous tale (New York Times Book Review)

About the Author

Bohumil Hrabal (Author)
Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was born and raised in Brno in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After working as a railway labourer, insurance agent, travelling salesman, manual labourer, paper-packer and stagehand, he published a collection of poetry that was quickly withdrawn by the communist regime. He went on to become one of the most important and most admired Czech writers of the 20th century; his best-known books include I Served the King of England, Closely Watched Trains (made into an Academy Award-winning film directed by Jiri Menzel) and Too Loud a Solitude. He fell to his death from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital, apparently trying to feed the pigeons.

Podrobnosti

Autor	Bohumil Hrabal
Vydavatel	Penguin Classics
Jazyk	anglicky
Vazba	měkká
Počet stran	96
Formát	12,9 × 19,8 cm
EAN	9780241290224
Překladatel	Edith Pargeter
Rok vydání	2017
Edice	Současná beletrie Překladová beletrie