An English-language translation of a novel written in the 1970s by the Czech author of 'Closely Observed Trains' and 'Too Loud a Solitude'. By turns sad and funny, it is set in a small provincial town in Bohemia between the wars, and reflects the passing of an age upon a community.

A grandiose old shoemaker tells his story to a circle of young women basking in the sun, a tale of amorous conquests and drunken misadventures

Chronicles the experiences of Ditie, who rises from busboy to hotel owner in World War II Prague, and whose life is shaped by the fate of his country before, during, and after the conflict

Product Description: Inspired by “Mrs. Tolstoy and Mrs. Dostoevsky, whose biographies about their husbands have now been published in Prague,” Bohumil Hrabal decided to produce his own autobiographical work, ostensibly fiction, from his wife’s point of view...read more

In rural Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, eccentric Maryska scandalizes her brewery town, but after the war, although the town remains undamaged, subtle changes start to appear as Communism threatens the political order.

Product Description: Novelist Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and he spent decades working at a variety of laboring jobs before turning to writing in his late forties. From that point, he quickly made his mark on the Czech literary scene; by the time of his death he was ranked with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera as among the nation’s greatest twentieth-century writers...read more

This parable of censorship and the modern state centers on Hanta, a trash collector whose habit of salvaging and reading discarded books has brought him both the richness of the classics and the ridicule of his boss

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