I Served the King of England

I Served the King of England

by Bohumil Hrabal (Author)

Synopsis

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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Edition: New
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Published: 05 Jan 2006

ISBN 10: 009949289X
ISBN 13: 9780099492894
Book Overview: 'Our very best writer today' Milan Kundera 20050324

Media Reviews
'The fantasising and storytelling deliver a body blow of total irreverence to the solemn mythopoeia of monumental historiography' Times Literary Supplement
Author Bio
Bohumil Hrabal was born in 1914 in Brno-Zidenice, Moravia. He received a degree in Law from Prague's Charles University, and lived in Prague since the late 1940s. In the 1950s he worked as a manual laborer in the Kladno Ironworks, from which he drew inspiration for his hyper-realist texts he was writing at that time. He won international acclaim for such books as I Served the King of England and Too Loud a Solitude. Hrabal is considered, along with Jaroslav Hasek and Karel Capek, as one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century, and perhaps the most important in the post-war period. In February 1997 he flew out of his hospital window never to return.