Bohumil Hrabal (Brno, 1914 - Prague, 1997) was a Czech novelist, often counted among the best Czech writers of the twentieth century. He wrote in Czech through the Nazi occupation and the communist regime, and his work, translated into many languages, is still read for its humour and its attention to ordinary people.
He was born in Židenice, a district of Brno, then in Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother. He grew up mostly in Nymburk, on the Elbe, where his stepfather ran a brewery. He studied law in Prague, but the occupation closed the universities and he did not graduate until 1946. During the war he worked as a railway labourer. Later he was an insurance agent, a travelling salesman, a steelworker in Kladno, a paper packer in a recycling mill and a stagehand in a Prague theatre. That mix of jobs feeds much of his fiction.
He began as a poet and writer of stories in the late 1940s, but his first published book appeared in 1963, when he was nearly fifty. An earlier collection of poems from 1948 was withdrawn when the communist government took power. After the Soviet-led invasion of 1968 he was barred from publishing normally, and much of his work circulated in samizdat editions and abroad. Too Loud a Solitude was finally published officially in 1989.
His style draws on Surrealism and Dada, using collage and montage, and on close observation of everyday life. His characters are eccentric, cheerful and talkative anti-heroes, and by his own account his stories grow out of real events moved in time. Long sentences, torrents of speech and comedy sit alongside a concern with power and history. He admired Joyce, Céline and Ungaretti.
CloselyWatched Trains was filmed by Jiří Menzel in 1966, and I Served the King of England was also adapted by Menzel, in 2006. His memoir trilogy Weddings at the House reconstructs his life partly through the voices of his wife Eliška and people around him. Milan Kundera called him the embodiment of magical Prague. He died in 1997 after falling from a fifth-floor window, and it remains debated whether it was an accident or a suicide.
Key works
- Closely Watched Trains (1965), a novel about a railway switchman and his apprentice under the Nazi occupation.
- I Served the King of England (1971), a story of a young waiter's rise and fall in contact with history.
- Too Loud a Solitude (written 1976, official publication 1989), a monologue by a paper-recycling worker facing a changing world.
- Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964), an experimental work built as one long unfinished sentence.
Curiosities
Favourite pub
Much of his storytelling took place in Prague pubs, most famously U zlatého tygra on Husova Street. On 11 January 1994 he met Czech President Václav Havel, US President Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright there.
A withdrawn debut
His first collection, Ztracená ulička from 1948, was withdrawn from circulation when the communist regime took hold.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.