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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL

'Our very best writer today' Milan Kundera

Sparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, I Served the King of England is a story of how the unbelievable came true. Its remarkable hero, Ditie, is a hotel waiter who rises to become a millionaire and then loses it all again against the backdrop of events in Prague from the German invasion to the victory of Communism. Ditie's fantastic journey intertwines the political and the personal in a narrative that both enlightens and entertains. The fantasising and storytelling deliver a body blow of total irreverence to the solemn mythopoeia of monumental historiography * Times Literary Supplement * Hrabal bounces and floats. His mode is a sort of dancing realism, somewhere between fairytale and satire.He is a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail. We should read him -- Julian Barnes Well worth reading * The Book Magazine * A master of rueful comedy and tender eroticism, Hrabal was, for all his eccentricity, a major figure in 20th-century world literature. -- Jonathan Coe

I Served The King Of England: Featuring an introduction by Adam Thirlwell