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Bohumil Hrabal

Born

in Brno, Czech Republic

March 28, 1914

Died

February 03, 1997

Genre

Fiction

Influences

Ladislav Klíma, Schopenhauer, James Joyce, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Giu ...more

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Born in Brno-Židenice, Moravia, he lived briefly in Polná, but was raised in the Nymburk brewery as the manager's stepson.

Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.

He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladimír Boudník in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.

His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("kočenky").

He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlatého tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met Born in Brno-Židenice, Moravia, he lived briefly in Polná, but was raised in the Nymburk brewery as the manager's stepson.

Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.

He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladimír Boudník in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.

His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("kočenky").

He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlatého tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met the Czech President Václav Havel, the American President Bill Clinton and the then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on January 11th, 1994.

Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to the objections of the authorities, including The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (Městečko, kde se zastavil čas) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále).

He died when he fell from a fifth floor hospital where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.

He was buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Hradištko. In the same grave his mother "Maryška", step father "Francin", uncle "Pepin", wife "Pipsi" and brother "Slávek" were buried.

He wrote with an expressive, highly visual style, often using long sentences; in fact his work Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964) (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) is made up of just one sentence. Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are also a recurrent theme.

Along with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera - who were also imaginative and amusing satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages. ...more

Combine Editions
Bohumil Hrabal’s books

Average rating: 3.89 · 68,490 ratings · 7,506 reviews · 199 distinct works • Similar authors

	Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Henry Heim (Translator) 3.97 avg rating — 27,665 ratings — published 1976 — 96 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal, Edith Pargeter (Translator), Josef Škvorecký (Foreword) 3.71 avg rating — 14,117 ratings — published 1965 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I Served the King of England 4.05 avg rating — 10,942 ratings — published 1983 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age 3.55 avg rating — 2,583 ratings — published 1964 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Postřižiny 3.81 avg rating — 2,316 ratings — published 1974 — 42 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal, Paul Wilson (Translator) 3.55 avg rating — 1,856 ratings — published 1983 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Little Town Where Time Stood Still 3.88 avg rating — 1,497 ratings — published 1974 — 54 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Czuły barbarzyńca by Bohumil Hrabal, Aleksander Kaczorowski (Translator) 4.10 avg rating — 1,141 ratings — published 1973 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult by Bohumil Hrabal, Paul Wilson (Translator) 3.43 avg rating — 775 ratings — published 1965 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Slavnosti sněženek 4.13 avg rating — 534 ratings — published 1978 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Bohumil Hrabal…

Series by Bohumil Hrabal

Městečko u vody (3 books)
by

Bohumil Hrabal,

Stacey Knecht (Translator)

3.85 avg rating — 2,998 ratings

trilogie (3 books)
by

Bohumil Hrabal,

Tony Liman (Translator)

4.13 avg rating — 804 ratings

Quotes by Bohumil Hrabal (?)

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

1379 likes

“Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

tags: books, literature, reading, words

404 likes

“I can be by myself because I'm never lonely; I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

tags: isolation, solitude

301 likes

See all Bohumil Hrabal's quotes »

Polls

Welches aus dem Tschechischen übersetzte Buch wollen wir als nächstes lesen?
Die Abstimmung läuft bis zum 12. 9.
Zweitstimmen bitte in die Kommentare.

Patrik Banga: Ich war wütend auf die ganze Welt: Die Geschichte eines Prager Rom

2 votes, 40.0%

Radka Denemarková: Schokoladenblut

1 vote, 20.0%

Bohumil Hrabal: Ich habe den englischen König bedient

1 vote, 20.0%

Ondřej Hübl: Der Vorhang

1 vote, 20.0%

Miroslav Hlaučo: Pfingsten: Erinnerungen an ein Ende der Welt

0 votes, 0.0%

5 total votes

3 comments

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Bohumil Hrabal’s Followers (1,374)

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Bohumil Hrabal’s books