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Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále

Bohumil Hrabal

4.10 · Rating details · 6,521 ratings · 480 reviews

Tématem svérázného vyprávění je životní dráha číšníka, později hoteliéra a nakonec cestáře v době politických zvratů první poloviny 20. století.
Od 20. až do 50. let tohoto století prožívá svůj příběh jednoduchý, od mládí podnikavý a snaživý muž, který své úspěchy i neúspěchy připisuje shodám okolností, ale využívá jich k překonávání svých handicapů. Opovržení ze strany dr ...more

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Hardcover, 260 pages

Published 2012 by Mladá fronta (first published 1971)

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Dec 16, 2014 Tony rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: top-10-2014, czech

Czechs say Bohumil Hrabal's work is untranslatable. When I read Too Loud a Solitude I indeed felt something wasn't coming through. But I chalked it up to a style of Eastern European literature: dark, allegorical, an unfiltered cigarette of protest to communist grime. Glad I read it but no rush to read any more Hrabal.

And then I stopped in a used bookstore, just this week. Monday. There was I Served the King of England. I jimmied it out and thumbed it open, expecting to read a sentence or two and sli ...more

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May 10, 2014 Nicole~ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: czech-republic, lit-fiction, hrabal

Man's body and spirit are indestructible...he is merely changed or metamorphized
- Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England (1971).

Hrabal's satirically political, erotically imagined and poignant adventure story follows the rise and fall of a young busboy Ditie (Czech for 'child') who, despite his diminutive stature, possesses big dreams and the determination to become a millionaire to be the equal of everyone else: is influenced by his father's advice to have an aim in life because then he'd have a reason ...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 2013

I was actually trying to find another book by Hrabal : Closely Watched Trains , but the library only had this. I'm glad I picked it up, as it was a joy to read from start to finish, and much more serious and thought provoking than the comedy of the first pages let me believe. Probably, the book would not qualify as a 'hidden gem' with a 4+ rating from 4000 votes and an inclusion into one of those '1001 books to read before you die' lists, but I still think it is underappreciated and worthy of
I was actually trying to find another book by Hrabal : Closely Watched Trains , but the library only had this. I'm glad I picked it up, as it was a joy to read from start to finish, and much more serious and thought provoking than the comedy of the first pages let me believe. Probably, the book would not qualify as a 'hidden gem' with a 4+ rating from 4000 votes and an inclusion into one of those '1001 books to read before you die' lists, but I still think it is underappreciated and worthy of more praises and recognition than it has already received.

Briefly, this is a picaresque adventure, following the tribulations of the busboy (waiter) Ditie in Bohemia, starting in the 1930's through the World War and into the communist upheaval in the aftermath of the war. First glimpsed as a crafty 14 y.o. selling hamburgers to time-pressed train travelers and conning them out of their money, we follow him through a series of jobs in luxurious hotels, culminating with a sumptuous soiree serving not the King of England, but Hailee Selassie - the Emperor of Ethiopia.

A classic case of Napoleonic complex, Ditie's very short stature is constantly pushing him forward to prove himself and to demonstrate that he belongs, that he is as good, if not better than any of his colleagues and patrons. His ultimate ambition is to become a hotel owner himself, serving the rich and famous and basking in the recognition of his peers. Ditie's lack of scruples, amoral atitudes and self absorbtion might have turned me off towards him if it weren't for his exuberant zest for life, manifest in his early discovery and veneration of a woman's body ( breasts swinging like bells in a church tower ), in the carefree throwing away of money on rich food, drinks and wild parties. For me the book is a happy marriage between the rigorous Germanic pride in a job well done and impecable service with the wilder Slav streak that lives for the moment and swings often between extremes of joy and depression. The closest analogy to the irreverent and whimsical style of Hrabal narration is coming from the movies : think of an amalgam of Federico Fellini's wild carnivals, the early biting satire of Milos Forman, Emir Kusturica dancing to gypsy music on the edge of the abyss, the melancholy and the lust in Francois Truffaut or Giuseppe Tornatore mannish boys. The inclusion of Bohumil Hrabal among these 'sacred monsters' doesn't seem forced to me, as I consider his work every bit as accomplished and relevant of human dreams and desires.

The title of the novel is both misleading and difficult to pin down. As I already mentioned, Ditie doesn't actually service the King of England, yet the phrase comes to define his life, the turning point of his career, the eye opener and later the acceptance of his failures together with his successes. The first to use the phrase is one of Ditie's mentors, Mr. Skrivánek - who considers waiting an art which, he says, involves a deep knowledge of human nature. The payoff from these lessons and observations will come only when Ditie learns about pain and loss and the imminence of death, watching young men departing for the war, leaving their loved one behind ( I learned to see the countryside, the flowers on the tables, the children at play, and to see that every hour is a sacrament )

Other mentors in Ditie's waiting career will urge him to to keep his ears open without hearing, keep his eyes open without seeing. He will be ready to recognize and profit from every opportunity, while maintaining a facade of discretion and detachment from his client's debauchery. From a travelling salesman he learns about the true value of money, not in themselves but in the liberty of choices and in the hedonist delights they buy. 'Easy come, easy go' is another of those Balkanic angles that are familiar territory for me. Losing everything can be a liberating step, or as we say around here, a kick in the behind is a step forward:

Tommorrow I would live for somewhere far away, far from people, though of course I knew there'd be people there too, and I'd always believed, like everyone else who works in artificial light, that one day I would get out of the city and into nature, that when I retired I would see what a forest really looked like, what the sun really looked like, the sun that has shoned into my face every day of my life, making me shield my eyes with a hat or a shadow. When I was a waiter I used to love it when at least once a day all those doormen and superintendents and stokers would come out of their buildings, turn their faces upward, and from the abyss of the Prague streets gaze at the strip of sky overhead, at the clouds, to see what time really was, according to nature and not by the clock.

The politics don't play a very big role in the beginning of the novel, but as Ditie grows up he can no longer ignore the events that will directly affect his life : the invasion of his native land while the woman he falls in love with is a Nazi activist, the atrocities against Jews in Poland that will provide him with the means to buy his dream hotel; Lidice - the village razed to the ground in revenge for partizan activity, the proud Aryan supermen returning crippled and empty-eyed from the Russian front, the communist regime upsetting the social ladder that Ditie had tried so hard to climb. The humorous overtones and the epicurean exploits never fully disappear from the landscape (see a memorable late scene in an improvised prison), but the pain, the injustice and the futility of existence would mark the later journey of our picaresque hero. I have chosen to interpret Ditie's final reiteration of the boast from the title, as him looking back at his life not in anger but with a clear eye, no regrets or excuses or moral lessons, not even any grandiose revelation about the meaning of life, just a bit of justifiable pride and a half smile at the folly and beauty of it all.

The only right things were the things I enjoyed - not the way children and drunks enjoy things, but the way the professor of French literature taught me, enjoyment that was metaphysical. When you enjoy something, then you've got it, you idiots, you evil, stupid, criminal sons of men, he would say, and he'd browbeat us until he got us where he wanted us, open to poetry, to objects, to wonder, and able to see that beauty always points to infinity and eternity.
...more

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Jun 02, 2011 Lena rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is a highly regarded mid-century novel by an acclaimed Czech writer that wasn't translated into English until late last century. It tells the story of Ditie, an impoverished youth who starts work selling hot dogs in a train station and works his way up through the service industry as life around him is torn asunder by the second World War.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this novel at first, with its page-long sentences, dearth of female characters and absurdist, fairy-tale u ...more

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Dec 20, 2016 Laysee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Czech writer, Bohumil Hrabal, is a raconteur par excellence. “I Served the King of England” is a highly entertaining story about how the unbelievable comes true many times over for Ditě. When we first make his acquaintance, he is only age 15 and a busboy at the Grand Prague Hotel. The story follows Ditě’s colorful career in the hotel industry from busboy to waiter, to lead waiter and to hotel owner; his sexual exploits; his self-awakening. In essence, it is the story of Ditě, a pint-size man try Czech writer, Bohumil Hrabal, is a raconteur par excellence. “I Served the King of England” is a highly entertaining story about how the unbelievable comes true many times over for Ditě. When we first make his acquaintance, he is only age 15 and a busboy at the Grand Prague Hotel. The story follows Ditě’s colorful career in the hotel industry from busboy to waiter, to lead waiter and to hotel owner; his sexual exploits; his self-awakening. In essence, it is the story of Ditě, a pint-size man trying to find his way in the world and to gain respect. The novel also offers glimpses of life in Czechslovakia before and after the German occupation in World War II. I derived much pleasure from Hrabal’s vivid depiction of the otherwise invisible operations behind buzzling hotels and the unimaginable cuisine (lung in sour sauce, anyone?) served in their fancy restaurants. The novel is uproariously funny (for a good stretch) and yet it is unsuspectingly profound in its observation of our human aspirations and needs.

Hrabal’s character caricatures are memorable and a joy to read. I grew to love a few of the key waiters who are influential in mentoring Ditě and honing his skills of observation. (view spoiler)

An intoxicating quality permeates Hrabal’s prose and the settings that he paints. There is a sense of wild abandon ("free-spending gaiety and debauchery”), a celebration of wealth and the frivolity of literally throwing money to the four winds. The writing is cheeky, saucy, ribald. Then the narrative takes on a sober and darker tone as it segues into the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Unpleasant events happen to Ditě but the unbelievable also keeps coming true for him.(view spoiler)

The novel is graced with many pleasing and touching episodes that merit re-reading. (view spoiler)

Read “I Served the King of England”. It exceeds expectations on many counts. Five brilliant stars. ...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Josh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great characters don't die: take Svejk for example. Last seen hunting mongrels to smuggle into the purebred boudoirs of gullible dowagers , he emerges, after a Van Winklian absence, in the novels and persona of Bohumil Hrabal, arguably central Europe's greatest pure novelist of the post WWII era (by "pure novelist" here I mean something like what sportswriters mean when they describe a basketball player as a "pure shooter" or "pure point guard": nobility, heredity, mystical powers). I Served the ...more

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Sep 17, 2017 Jeannette Nikolova rated it liked it · review of another edition

Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.

I bought this book during my trip to Prague as part of my project to get a book or two in each new country I visit. Now, this is not my first Czech book, but I wanted to try a new Czech author nevertheless.

In my opinion, one of the best things about the book was actually the foreword. Unfortunately, I don't have the book right now, so I can't mention the author of the foreword, but they wrote a very informative, interesting and engaging analysis of both "I Served the King of"I Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.

I bought this book during my trip to Prague as part of my project to get a book or two in each new country I visit. Now, this is not my first Czech book, but I wanted to try a new Czech author nevertheless.

In my opinion, one of the best things about the book was actually the foreword. Unfortunately, I don't have the book right now, so I can't mention the author of the foreword, but they wrote a very informative, interesting and engaging analysis of both "I Served the King of England", and Hrabal's literature in general. Not knowing the author, it really helped me see some tendencies in his writing and in the themes he uses.

The book itself was not exactly to my liking. The story was rather interesting, but the atmosphere was very tight and suffocating. The main character was such a narrow-minded little man that his world was equally as small and claustrophobic. His experiences, even the ones he was most proud of and most happy about, always had a pinch of wrongness and just this general feeling about something dirty and repulsive happening. For example, as you can see in the cover of the book, he liked to put flowers in the pubic hair of the women he slept with. But those women were either prostitutes, or his Nazi-to-the-bone wife, and there was something very unpleasant and private about reading about his joy from this action.

I feel like this is something that often happens in European literature, and especially that of the ex-Communist countries. While in American literature even murder and gore are kind of shiny in description, in European literature, there is this sense of the author wanting to create shock in the reader through showing the reality in the most vulgar way possible. It is a thing I have always noticed in in every piece of art in Bulgaria - be it literature, movies, paintings, there is always sex. But it is not appealing, erotic sex. It's always the kind of description of sex which makes you feel uncomfortable and in need of a hot shower and a lot of scrubbing.

This is how I felt while reading this book. And spoiler alert for my next Czech book - The Joke, - same thing there.

One thing which was mentioned in the foreword of the book which I couldn't help but notice later on, was the fact that the character is always in need of proving himself and he is in a desperate need of attention and achieving every physical element of happiness and obtaining every material proof of success. While in character he is a spineless worm, in aspiration, he wants, and even briefly manages, to be rich and famous.

Setting everything about the story aside, Hrabal, undeniably, has a very good writing style. The descriptions he uses are very poetical and thought through. He guides the reader into his world and helps him see everything through exactly the right prism.

"I knew for certain that this girl could never be happy, but that her life would be sadly beautiful, and that life with her would be both an agony and a fulfillment for a man."

...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-czech

This is one of the rare cases where I saw the movie well before I read the book. In part, I think my reaction to the book is because of what I saw with movie. Tracing the rise and fall of a busboy during the mid-1900s, I Served the King of England is a brew of humor, strangeness and beauty. It is impossible, though the movie came very close; to capture the absolute beauty of the language, even as it appears in translated form.

It’s strange because it is the beauty of the language tha ...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Steven rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: czech, books-i-own, literature

"But I didn't want to be seen by human eyes anymore, or praised for what I'd done—all of that had left me." (226)

I lived in Prague for almost seven years, from the age of nine to fourteen. I was too young at the time to have a sense of Czech literature, of course, but I'm trying to make up for it – retrospectively – by reading more Czech authors (aside from the more obvious choice of Kundera). This actually goes for the literatures of all the countries in which I've lived; sadly, I only started seriously ...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Mike Nettleton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I don't read much fiction these days, but when I do, I often go for or back to Hrabal. Even though Kundera is probably the best known Czech writer (and another favorite) Hrabal is considered the grandaddy. They cover many of the same themes — communism, relationships, sex — but their styles couldn't be more different. Hrabal reminds me of Hemingway via Bukowski — short, boozy and punchy. But he also mixes in a dream-like quality, where implausible things are made to seem commonplace.

This was my ...more

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Oct 12, 2014 Andrea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation

This book I love, the trials and tribulations of a tiny waiter, Ditie. A keen and amoral observer of human foibles in a rapid flow of tale telling that is almost stream of consciousness. There are plenty of whores in this book, and they are always happy and smiling in this book. It works from Ditie's perspective though, as it is never anything less than deeply flawed. Foundationally, it is written by someone who understands what it means to be on your feet all day, which won me over from the beg This book I love, the trials and tribulations of a tiny waiter, Ditie. A keen and amoral observer of human foibles in a rapid flow of tale telling that is almost stream of consciousness. There are plenty of whores in this book, and they are always happy and smiling in this book. It works from Ditie's perspective though, as it is never anything less than deeply flawed. Foundationally, it is written by someone who understands what it means to be on your feet all day, which won me over from the beginning because it does feel like this:

That was the other side of my tuxedo, the other side of all waiters and busboys and maître d's the world over: white starched shirts and dazzling white rubber collars and legs slowly turning black, like some horrible disease where people start dying from the feet up (14).

I hate violence, but could love people who fought like this over romanticism and realism

They'd have discussions and read books, and they even put on plays, but about every two weeks the boss's wife would into passionate arguments with her husband, and they would disagree so violently about romanticism or realism or Smetana and Janáček that they would start pouring wine over each other and hitting each other.

And Zdeněk? Who goes on to join the resistance while Ditie falls in love with a German woman in love with the Third Reich and lives ashamed and safe? I love the thought of a man and world where such great hearted generosity exists, just as I love dancing until morning:

He had an aristocratic habit of spending practically everything he earned, and now and then he would treat himself the way our guests did, but he'd always have so much money left over that toward mrning, when we came back by taxi, he's arouse the innkeeper of the emtiest inn in the village and order him to go wake up some musicians to play for him. Then Zdeněk would go from door to door and invite the sleepers to come down to the inn and drink his health, and then the music played and there was dancing until dawn , and when they'd drained the innkeepers bottles and barrels dry, Zdeněk would wake up the owner of the grocery store, buy a whole basketful of jars, and pas them out as gifts to all the old women and men (71-72).

There is the incredible tale of the visit of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, his 300 guests eating with cutlery of gold, the minute descroptions of the feast prepared for them of turkeys stuffed into antelope stuffed into a camel, so delicious the king's official taster jumps to his feet and shouts for joy. And Ditie is given a medal and sash for his service to the emperor which he wears ever after.

After Ditie returns to his home with the dirty money stolen by his wife, becomes a millionaire but never part of the club, loses it all under the communists, is exiled to a kind of work camp, there is poetry here too:

In the morning the dew was so thick it tore like a curtain when you walked through it, and it fell in a kind of rosary on every blade of grass and every leaf, and if you just brushed again a branch the dew dropped off like pearls from a broken necklace (211)

The spruce that sings, and whose wood is used to make instruments. Ditie's awakening into an intellectual world (along with a sulky slut who is made beautiful through this transformation but never mind):

The only right things were the things I enjoyed -- not the way children or drinkers enjoyed things, but the way the professor of French literature taught me, enjoyment that was metaphysical. When you enjoy something, then you've got it you idiots, you evil, stupid, criminal sons of me, he would say, and he;d browbeat us until he got us where he wanted us, open to poetry, to objects, to wonder, and able to see that beauty always points to infinity and eternity.

I liked the introduction, but always hate it when it doesn't include some thoughtful consideration of the translation. There is only a page at the back for translator Paul Wilson's acknowledgments, and he notes 'Bohumil Hrabal's work, Czechs say, is untranslateable. This book is my response to that challenge'. It goes on to call Hrabal's use of Czech 'Hrabalovština', which makes me rather yearn to read it as it was written. Or to read the many other novels, none of which have been translated. ...more

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May 06, 2013 Bjorn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: czech, czechoslovakia

Suffice to say that while it's not quite the bulls-eye that Too Loud A Solitude is, it still kept me absolutely riveted. Like with the other Hrabals I've read, it's a microperspective of something much larger, telling the story of life in Czechoslovakia from the 1930s to the communist era from the horizon of a small and rather clueless restaurant worker; he starts as a bus boy and works his way up to manager before everything comes crashing down, and yes, the double meaning of "serve" is very de ...more

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May 26, 2014 Adam Dalva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Really strong stream-of-consciousness novel that plays fast and loose with time and stakes. The first half is especially strong - the action in various hotels is hilarious and well-observed, and Dite is that rare mixture of likeable and abhorrent. The political intersections (both World War II and the rise of Communism) are both interesting and obligatory, but I do think they occasionally slowed down the action and contributed to the general feeling of trailing off that pervaded. The ending, tho ...more

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Sep 13, 2018 Andrew added it · review of another edition

Shelves: czech-fiction, eastern-european-fiction

I know the (excellent) work of Stefan Zweig was the direct inspiration of The Grand Budapest Hotel, but it's almost difficult to believe that I Served the King of England didn't play some role. After all, it's the story of the remarkable misadventures of a Middle European hotelier who tries to cope with Nazism, Bolshevism, and his own piss-poor luck. The style is similar to the other Hrabal books I've read, tragicomic and weirdly sweet even at its darkest, very much in the mode of writers like Z ...more

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Jan 15, 2018 Alex Kudera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I began this book in November, took a break well into it, but read the last fifty pages over the past few days. The first chapter is amazing and there are plenty of interesting scenes and asides throughout. Descriptions are often extremely rich, and the novel often has unique ways of addressing 20th-century European history (no spoilers).

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Jan 17, 2016 Tsung rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourite

The unbelievable came true.

“I served the King of England” is good old-fashioned storytelling and it goes straight to my favourites shelf. Hrabal is a master raconteur although his style may not appeal to everybody. It is rambling with long sentences and yarns which join together without a logical connection. Yet his stories are quirky, hilarious and grab your attention.

“When I started to work at the Golden Prague Hotel, the boss took hold of my left ear, pulled me up and ...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Eugene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

reminded me of walser -- maybe a more worldy walser. as if instead of retreating to the madhouse, hrabal was sentenced to the purgatory of the diplomatic corps -- forced propriety despite the absurd or horrific swirls of history around him. but, like walser, he recognizes the poetic gesture... poetic or romantic despite or because of the old world sexism and classism rampant (and rampant still) just before the second world war, the ripened-to-rot but still shiny weimar-type decadence... without reminded me of walser -- maybe a more worldy walser. as if instead of retreating to the madhouse, hrabal was sentenced to the purgatory of the diplomatic corps -- forced propriety despite the absurd or horrific swirls of history around him. but, like walser, he recognizes the poetic gesture... poetic or romantic despite or because of the old world sexism and classism rampant (and rampant still) just before the second world war, the ripened-to-rot but still shiny weimar-type decadence... without mentioning it to spoil it, the first chapter has one of the more romantic scenes i've read in many a year.

the movement from charming and bawdy to dark satire and political farce to apocalyptic dream and finally into prayerful meditation -- all that transition done quietly, even feigning modesty, yet this quiet hiding a great ambition. the transitions' build-up and execution reflective of not only the change of an individual but of nation-states.

here's a scene to wet yer whistle:

"I saw Zdenëk, the headwaiter at the Hotel Tichota, who enjoyed having a good time so much when he was off work that to get it he'd spend all the money he had with him, which was always several thousand. Then I saw his uncle, a military bandmaster now retired, who split wood on his little plot of land in the forest where he had a cottage overgrown with flowers and wild vines. This uncle had been a bandmaster at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and still wore his uniform when he split wood, because he had written two polkas and several waltzes that still got played all the time, although no one remembered who the composer was and everyone thought he'd died a long time ago. Zdenëk and I, as we were riding along in a rented buggy on one of our days off, heard the sound of a military brass band playing one of his uncle's waltzes, and Zdenëk stood up and signaled the driver to stop, then went over to the band and had a little talk with the bandmaster. He offered to give him all the money he had, four thousand crowns, for the soldiers to buy themselves beer, if they would do what he asked. Buses were waiting, and the whole band was getting ready to climb aboard to go to a band tattoo, so we left the buggy there and got on the first bus with them. After an hour's drive we stopped in a forest, and soon a hundred and twenty uniformed musicians with their shiny instruments were advancing slowly down a road through the woods. Then they turned onto a footpath lined with thick bushes and pine trees that towered overhead, and Zdenëk signaled them to stop and slipped through some loose planks in a fence, disappeared into the bushes for a few moments, then came back and told them his plan. When he gave the sign, the soldiers climbed one by one through the hole in the fence into the bushes while Zdenëk, like a soldier at the front, directed them to take positions around the tiny house. They could hear the sound of an ax striking wood, and the entire band silently surrounded the chopping block and an old man in an ancient Austrian bandleader's uniform. When Zdenëk gave the signal, the bandmaster flung his golden ceremonial baton in the air, gave a loud command, and out of the bushes rose a glistening array of brass instruments and the band began to play a clamorous polka by Zdenëk's uncle. The old bandleader stood transfixed over the piece of wood he had just split, while the band moved forward a couple of steps, still up to their waists in pine and oak shrubs. Only the bandmaster stood in the greenery up to his knees, swinging his golden baton while the band played the polka and their instruments flashed in the sunlight. The old bandleader slowly looked around with a heavenly expression on his face, and when they finished the polka the band started right in on one of his concert waltzes, and the old bandleader sat down, put his ax across his knees, and began to cry. The bandmaster came up and touched his shoulder, the old man looked up, and the bandmaster handed him the golden baton. Now the old man got to his feet and, as he told us afterward, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven with a military band all around him, and he thought they must play military music in heaven and that God Himself was conducting the band and was now turning His own baton over to him. So the old man conducted his own pieces, and when he'd finished, Zdenëk stepped out of the bushes, shook hands with his uncle, and wished him good health. Half an hour later the band climbed back into their buses and as they were driving away they played Zdenëk a farewell ceremonial fanfare. Zdenëk stood there filled with emotion and bowed and thanked them, and finally the buses, and with them the fanfares, faded down the road through the woods, lashed by beech branches and shrubs" (159-61).

...more

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May 31, 2015 Stacey Jones rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I Served the King of England is like no other novel I have ever read. It careens through the career of the narrator, Ditie, through the middle of the 20th century in Prague and the hinterlands of the Czech Republic, through multiple political systems and the ups and downs that go with them for the people on whose backs they rest. And yet its absurdism is delightful while it simultaneously diminishes what it challenges.

The style may take some getting used to My husband and I read this I Served the King of England is like no other novel I have ever read. It careens through the career of the narrator, Ditie, through the middle of the 20th century in Prague and the hinterlands of the Czech Republic, through multiple political systems and the ups and downs that go with them for the people on whose backs they rest. And yet its absurdism is delightful while it simultaneously diminishes what it challenges.

The style may take some getting used to My husband and I read this book aloud, and, honestly, my goal was just to read one paragraph in a sitting--they are that long! This style gives the book a frantic and frenetic pace, but it still charms and engages. There isn't much dialog, and what is there is included in the ever-hurtling-forward action as Ditie learns his waiting trade at multiple hotels, including the one where the head waiter served the King of England. Ditie gets his own big moment, which provides him with his own refrain through the ups and downs of the novel.

I found this book so quintessentially Czech, and I loved the way it evokes a truly Czech sensibility of the randomness of life that isn't tied to self-worth or virtue (unlike the American dream). There is a Czech joke that makes a punchline out of a farmer showing a visitor two identical cows. He cannot stop extolling the virtues of one of the cows; he goes on and on and on. The other cow, when asked, he can say absolutely nothing good about. He hates that cow. He wishes it had never been born. He would starve it to death if he could afford its loss. The visitor can't stand it, and finally says, "But, aren't they exactly alike?!" The farmer answers, "Yes."

This is the sensibility that comes through in this novel by Hrabal, and makes this novel such a beautiful and dear artifact of Czech culture and perspective. Random things happen all the time, and the beneficiaries of good are no more worthy than the targets of the bad. Ditie's life tumbles up and down, mostly due to circumstances around him, powered some by his own ambition.

I also wondered if Wes Anderson didn't read this for inspiration for Grand Budapest Hotel. I could picture it in those terms so easily!

This is a wonderful, fantastical, clever commentary on geopolitics and how they play in the lives of the "common man," and it is worth a read. Let yourself fall in--don't try to control it. Enjoy it as it washes over you. You'll be glad you did. ...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Rogier rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Went to the Globe bookstore in Prague to buy Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk to get me through a 15-hour train ride, but their last copy was mysteriously missing.

The Globe girl recommended this masterpiece as an alternative. One of those lucky accidents in life! This book makes you realise that Milan Kundera turned into a boring old has-been after his glory days of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Joke. Once you start Hrabal's comic trip through pre-war, Nazi, and co ...more

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May 08, 2014 Stacia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: europe, 2014

I loved it completely -- the picaresque, comic, yet sharp social & political observations delivered seriously by our height-challenged, not-completely-but-almost-hapless narrator. At times it's almost silly, at other times a strange look at horrific events, yet it is all told with a levity, a belief in the ultimate goodness & hope of life (that's how it came across to me), in spite of the good or bad that has gone before. It's like looking back at a life well-lived (& not well-lived, ...more

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Jun 28, 2014 Rachelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Statement 1: There are so many similarities here with Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel that the man must have absorbed the story in some form, reprocessed it and made it his own.
Statement 2: There is something about Czech writers. They have this quality as though the writer is talking to you across a table at a boozy café, leaning back in his creaky chair and casually pulling out a yarn so that by the time you leave, you are fully intoxicated and have completely absorbed his story. I like bo ...more

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Feb 10, 2018 Edy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-from-library

I think I have grasped this strange tendency of Poles to like Hrabal really much. There is something very intensive in the way he writes and the way he shows some things and he is not really afraid of showing every aspect of someone's life (even if in very grotesque way). So Hrabal kind of becomes an universal language for many people and I would be lying if I said that it did not affect me. In fact, I enjoyed this book, maybe not to the very end (some parts were a bit disturbing for me as well ...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Ensiform rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, czech

Translated by Paul Wilson (1980). A rich stream of consciousness novel, about Dite, a waiter who moves up in the world of Czech hotels, until the Germans invade and he marries a German woman. It jarred me: at first an absurdist romp, admiration for living life to its fullest à la Kazantzakis, then extremely abruptly, political nightmares intrude, and tragedy (albeit blithely reported, blithely experienced) and bittersweet philosophical observations rear their heads. I laughed out loud at some of ...more

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Dec 11, 2017 Gregory rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It felt like -22 today and I'm off work with a cold I'm almost certain I will die from, but this morning I dragged my broken sinuses and the body holding it to Starbucks to read a chapter or two from this book my little brother recommended. I stayed for a caffiene buzzed three hours and read the majority of it all in one sitting. It's a page-turner and it's simple and FUN to read.

****

It mainly details a young short busboy (and later not-young, not a busboy, but still short) longing It felt like -22 today and I'm off work with a cold I'm almost certain I will die from, but this morning I dragged my broken sinuses and the body holding it to Starbucks to read a chapter or two from this book my little brother recommended. I stayed for a caffiene buzzed three hours and read the majority of it all in one sitting. It's a page-turner and it's simple and FUN to read.

****

It mainly details a young short busboy (and later not-young, not a busboy, but still short) longing for fame and fortune in the hotelier business. It reminds me a lot of Mordecai Richler's Duddy Kravitz, a boy with ambition, a boy with wide eyes for money and women, and although Hrabal doesn't state it, like Duddy, our narrator in this book is also a Schlemiel. The book, while funny as Mordecai Richler gets in his books, Hrabal also gets an ending that stands with any heartbreaking tale of longing for riches that F. Scott Fitzgerald ever touched too. This book feels so American in content, and that goes without even mentioning John Steinbeck as a character in the novel, although it is clearly a product of Hrabal's surroundings and the political state of his country.

This book is simple and beautiful at surface level, but there's so much here if you want to dig and I always love that quality in books.

****

I like how Hrabal wrote wine as well. I'm a sucker for... writers writing about things I'd like them to write about.

I remember he loved to drink heavy wines-ports, Algerian wines, Malaga- and he drank them all with great seriousness and so slowly he hardly seemed to be drinking, and each sip seemed to make him more handsome, and he'd roll the wine around in his mouth for a while and gulp it as though he were trying to get down a chunk of apple. After each mouthful, he would quickly declare that the Sahara sun was in that wine. p. 51

and again later

For the first time in my life I saw an entire wall bristling with bottles of Heinkel Trocken and sparkling champagnes, from Veuve Cliquot to Weinhardt's of Koblenz, walls of Martell and Hennessey cognac, hundreds of bottles of Scotch whiskies of all kinds. I also saw rare Mosel and Rhine wines, and out own Bzenecka wine from Moravia, and Czech wines from Melnik and Zernoseky. As he walked from cellar to cellar Mr. Skrivanek would caress the bottle necks fondly, like an alcoholic, though as a matter of fact he didn't drink, at least I'd never seen him drink, and I suddenly realized I'd never seen him sit down either

...more

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Sep 20, 2018 Jackson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Fantastic plot that goes places you can't see coming (at least, if you go into this book blindly, as I did). A main character that goes from hero to anti-hero and back again so fluidly you almost don't see it happening before your eyes. Introspection and wistfulness that hits hard and remains relevant to the plot. Historical accuracy in its settings. And brilliant translation -- not that I've read the original Czech, but damn, if this were originally an English-language novel, I'd say it was rea ...more

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Mar 19, 2017 KatieMc added it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub-2017, librarybook

This was a super uneven read for me. I was put off by the early chapters which were filled with Monte Python like physical humor and gratuitous objectification of women. The story bounced between lighthearted absurdities and grim horrors of the of the 20th century Czechoslovakian setting. I am certain much of the symbolic nuance was lost on me. I was often lost in the very long sentences and honestly I didn’t understand much of it. However, I absolutely adored the ending (view spoiler).

Too complicated to rate. ...more

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Nov 05, 2018 Jimmy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Hrabal was also the author of Closely Watched Trains, which was made into a move and won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1968. This book was also made into a film that I hope to watch some day:

Here is the trailer for the film version of I Served the King of England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgvlt...

And here is Roger Ebert's movie review for I Served the King of England: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-...

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Sep 23, 2019 Alina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: czech-literature

It is said that Hrabal's way of using the Czech language cannot be translated, but Czech language in itself is very hard to translate because of its many subtleties and nuances, many hues and edges. And then, there is a Czech spirit that is equally hard to catch if you haven't had the privilege to walk the golden streets of Prague, Chomutov, Velke Popovice or Decin or feel the quiet deep winters of the Bohemian forests. Yet, this particular edition of 1989 is good and Paul Wilson, the translato ...more

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Jun 03, 2017 Salome Khaindrava rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Mission is to stand out and bland in, as life gives us most unbeliveble stories. საკმარისია? - ჰოდა ეგრე...

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Sep 30, 2014 Malcolm rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-east-central-europe, lit-like

The central figure in this, perhaps Hrabal’s most widely read book (although Closely Observed Trains might pip it at the post) is the ingenuous and frankly unlikeable Ditie, a low level hotel staffer turned waiter, maitre d’ and hotel owner in mid 20th Century Bohemia. He starts out in a small town hotel and finishes up owning a luscious place in Prague only to fall foul of the Communist rise to power in the late 1940s…. but this, as with much of Hrabal’s other work, is a satire, and absurd take on a The central figure in this, perhaps Hrabal’s most widely read book (although Closely Observed Trains might pip it at the post) is the ingenuous and frankly unlikeable Ditie, a low level hotel staffer turned waiter, maitre d’ and hotel owner in mid 20th Century Bohemia. He starts out in a small town hotel and finishes up owning a luscious place in Prague only to fall foul of the Communist rise to power in the late 1940s…. but this, as with much of Hrabal’s other work, is a satire, and absurd take on a shameless lust for power and privilege on the part of an opportunist who will, it seems, stop at nothing to ingratiate himself with whomever might be the powers that be – his manager, Nazi occupiers, powerful forces in state.

Hrabal’s eye for pointed critique, for the absurdly banal in desires for status and success (as also seen in The Little Town Where Time Stood Still ) is well used here. Ditie is one of the world’s short people, whose height means that he is never quite seen as grown up, and despite his ambition suffers humiliation after humiliation, and some not inconsiderable success. Some of the humiliation is work-based, some sexual (but not of the fetish kind) but most powerful is the humiliation he must endure to be considered good enough to marry his German-speaking sweetheart during the occupation – Hrabal’s politics remain resolutely contrarian but with a sharp progressive edge.

Perhaps, for me, the most unsettling thing about this novel is Hrabal’s ability to keep me engaged with a character I find more than an anti-hero, but actively unlikeable. I don’t care for Ditie in the slightest, but Hrabal’s style makes me want to continue to find out what happens to him, while continually hoping for his comeuppance; even there I find myself frustrated. Part of Hrabal’s ability to explore banal desire for status is his ability to keep us as readers on tenterhooks: wondering whether he will finally succeed in this hotel – and when it does come (kind of) it is a thoroughly disruptive force where the world seems upside-down.

Fantastical, comic-like (but more satirically absurdist) but resolutely realist (but perhaps not realistic), Ditie takes us through the ordinary world of mid-century Czech ordinariness, mentored by the unexpected, (kind of) loved by the women in the brothels he seems to frequent with alarming regularity and continually with an eye for the main chance. And what’s more, it wasn’t Ditie who served the King of England; it was his mentor Mr Skřivánek. Ditie served the Emperor of Ethiopia….. even the title is a lie, and that should be a give-away. ...more

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About Bohumil Hrabal

Bohumil Hrabal

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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 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

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“He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with an ax...” — 90 likes

“...гърдите ми се изпълниха с такава радост, че неочаквано и за мен самия запях, подхванах несмело, защото цял живот не бях пял, цял живот не ми беше дошло отвътре ни веднъж да запея, през всичките тези десетилетия и през ум не ми беше минавало , че може и да запея… […] сякаш с песента, абе каква ти песен, по-скоро крясъци някакви, за които си въобразявах, че са песен, нищо повече от воя на кучето, та сякаш с това пеене изсипвах от себе си кутийки и чекмеджета, пълни с пропаднали полици, ненужни писма и пощенски картички, че от устата ми се отвяват нанякъде късчета от скъсани стари плакати, […] късчета от всичко, настанило се в човека като цигарен дим и катран в дробовете на пушач.” — 7 likes

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