Bohumil Hrabal’s Followers (1,318)

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

edit data

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: 3.9 · 63,999 ratings · 6,843 reviews · 185 distinct works • Similar authors

	Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Henry Heim (Translator) 3.97 avg rating — 26,104 ratings — published 1976	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) 3.72 avg rating — 12,923 ratings — published 1965 — 3 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 4.06 avg rating — 10,325 ratings — published 1983 — 6 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 3.57 avg rating — 2,449 ratings — published 1964 — 49 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 3.82 avg rating — 2,166 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) 3.56 avg rating — 1,602 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 3.90 avg rating — 1,422 ratings — published 1974 — 34 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 — 1,080 ratings — published 1973 — 31 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) 3.45 avg rating — 708 ratings — published 1965 — 37 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 4.12 avg rating — 507 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)

3.87 avg rating — 2,814 ratings

trilogie (3 books)
by

Bohumil Hrabal,

Tony Liman (Translator)

4.13 avg rating — 777 ratings

Quotes by Bohumil Hrabal (?)

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

1372 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

389 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

299 likes

See all Bohumil Hrabal's quotes »

Polls

December 2015 Short Story Poll

1843, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, 31 pages

23 votes, 18.5%

1905, The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, 32 pages

18 votes, 14.5%

1985, The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, 32 pages

17 votes, 13.7%

1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter, 126 pages

14 votes, 11.3%

1835, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, 48 pages

12 votes, 9.7%

1936, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway, 72 pages

12 votes, 9.7%

1865, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov, 88 pages

9 votes, 7.3%

1834, The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin, 52 pages

8 votes, 6.5%

1983, Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, 98 pages

5 votes, 4.0%

1897, Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham, 128 pages

5 votes, 4.0%

1955, Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, 128 pages

1 vote, 0.8%

124 total votes

1 comment

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Seasonal Read...: 25.3 - Jennifer N'S Task - Virtual Foreign Vacation	39	165	Aug 12, 2010 11:17AM
Book Nook Cafe: What I read in August 2010	127	118	Oct 03, 2010 01:15PM
100+ Books in 2025: Aga's books in 2010	97	369	Dec 31, 2010 01:24AM
75 Books...More o...: Aga's books in 2010	144	175	Dec 31, 2010 10:30AM
Reading with Style: WI 10-11 RwS Completed Tasks - Winter	704	512	Mar 01, 2011 09:19AM
Book Nook Cafe: Favorite Fiction of 2010	66	115	May 01, 2011 05:53AM
Goodreads Italia: Il pozzo letterario: Dicembre	164	151	Jan 08, 2013 10:54AM

More…