Książki

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. 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 *

Closely Watched Trains