Bohumil Hrabal

Funny, absurd, sad, ultimately tragic and at the same time affirmational, this story of Hanta is one of the great celebrations of the human spirit and of the transcendent value of art and beauty.  (It is also a sly and delightful satire on totalitarian attempts to control what we read, think, and feel.) Hrabal is one of the most delightful and unpredictable writers of all time, and for all that this book takes place in a filthy cellar with the background noises of rats fighting in the sewers, it is an exhilarating and uplifting hymn to the beauty and worth of the human spirit.

Too Loud a Solitude

I Served the King of England

عزلة صاخبة جدا

قطارات تحت الحراسة المشددة

A Czech novel written in one long sentence. Its protagonist is an old shoemaker who approaches several women on a beach and proceeds to regale them with stories from his life, some wise, some funny, some wicked. By the author of Closely Watched Trains.

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age

Follows the adventures of a sharp-witted waiter as he makes and loses a fortune among the ruins of post-war Europe. Author is one of Czechoslovakia's best writers.

Ostře sledované vlaky

Tells the story of Milos Hrma, a young railway junior dispatcher and signalman returning to work at a minor but strategically important Czech railway station. Milos has been away for three months, recuperating from a suicide attempt, and is warmly welcomed back by Station Master Lansky and Dispatcher Hubicka. The year is 1945, the Germans have lost command of the air-space over the town, but it remains an important rail hub for them and certain key transport trains are nominated by the German high command for "close surveillance" to ensure that they are not delayed by signals failures or problems on the lines.

Postrzyżyny

Pociągi pod specjalnym nadzorem

pedagogické texty

Něžný barbar

Ich habe den englischen König bedient. Roman

La cittadina dove il tempo si è fermato

Celeste Malpique

estudo sociopsicológico

A Ausência do pai

Ludmila Dismanová

Mário Gomes

Jorge Listopad

Eu que servi o rei de Inglaterra

Verpletterde schoonheid

Pábitelé

'Folks, life is beautiful! Bring on the drinks, I'm sticking around till I'm ninety! Do you hear?' A young boy grows up in a sleepy Czech community where little changes. His raucous, mischievous Uncle Pepin came to stay with the family years ago, and never left. But the outside world is encroaching on their close-knit town - first in the shape of German occupiers, and then with the new Communist order. Elegiac and moving, Bohumil Hrabal's gem-like portrayal of the passing of an age is filled with wit, life and tenderness. 'What is unique about Hrabal is his capacity for joy' Milan Kundera 'Even in a town where nothing happens, Hrabal's meticulous and exuberant fascination with the human voice insists that, as long as there's still breath in a body, life is endlessly eventful' Independent

The Little Town Where Time Stood Still

Hommage à Hrabal

An unforgettable portrait of a major pioneering artist, by “Czechoslovakia’s greatest writer” (Milan Kundera) The Gentle Barbarian is Bohumil Hrabal’s moving homage to Vladimír Boudník, a brilliant but troubled Czech graphic artist who died tragically at the age of forty-four a few months after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Gentle Barbarian takes us to the heart of Boudník’s creative drive: his gift for infusing the objects and events of everyday life with transcendent magic, and his passion for sharing his ideas and his art with anyone willing to listen. Hrabal’s anecdotal portrait includes another controversial figure in that early postwar Czech avant-garde: the poet Egon Bondy, the pen name and alter ego of a self-styled “left-wing Marxist” philosopher called Zbynek Fišer. Hrabal’s amazing memoir celebrates the creative spirits who strove to reject, ignore, or burrow beneath an artificial “revolutionary” fervor. Fueled by vast quantities of beer, emboldened by friendship, driven by a sense of their own destiny, they filled the intellectual and spiritual vacuum around them with manic humor, inspiration, and purpose, and in doing so, pointed the way to a kind of salvation.

The Gentle Barbarian

Něžný barbar ; Příliš hlučná samota

Městečko, kde se zastavil čas

Vzpomínkový i esejisticky meditativní, pedagogický text o Libni padesátých let a především o Hrabalově příteli, malíři a grafikovi Vladimíru Boudníkovi (1924-1968). Na hrázi Věčnosti, v domě na libeňské periferii, plyne život svým vlastním tempem.Doktor (přezdívka Bohumila Hrabala), grafik Vladimír Boudník a filozof Egon Bondy vedou svérázné diskuse o pravé podstatě umění a odmítají brát na zřetel reálný čas. Podle knihy byl natočen stejnojmenný film s Bolkem Polívkou, Arnoštem Goldflamem a Jiřím Menzelem v hlavních rolích.

Bohumil Hrabal

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