Closely Observed Trains

by Bohumil Hrabal, Edith Pargeter (Translator)

Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his best loved and most accessible works. Closely Observed Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Milos Hrma, a timid young railway apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. Day after day as he watches trains go by, he torments himself with the suspicion that he himself is being watched and with fears of impotency. Hrma finally affirms his manhood and, with a sense of peace and purpose he has never known before, heroically confronts a trainload of Nazis.

Genres: Fiction, Czech Literature, Classics, 20th Century, War, Literature, Novels

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

TRENI ACUTAMENTE OSSERVATI



Nella stazioncina il capostazione aspetta di essere promosso ispettore, ha la divisa nuova già pronta nell’armadio, e alleva colombi: prima della guerra allevava i bagadesi di Norimberga, ma quando i tedeschi invadono la Polonia, li strozza tutti e li sostituisce con altri, le linci polacche.
I treni passano da est a ovest e da ovest a est, con vagoni a volte pieni di soldati e infermiere, a volte crivellati di pallottole, a volte pieni di animali ridotti alla fame e disidratati immersi tra compagni già cadaveri.



Il capomanovra a mezzanotte ha sollevato la gonna della telegrafista, l’ha fatta stendere sul tavolo, le ha sfilato le mutandine e le ha stampato sul sedere tutti i timbri, almeno la metà dei quali in lingua tedesca.
Lei, adesso tutta timbrata, sembra più bella di prima e pensa di darsi al cinema.
Lui subisce un processo per il suo gesto oltraggioso e decide di far saltare in aria un convoglio.



Con l’aiuto di Milos, giovane apprendista manovratore, ma non così giovane da non poter conoscere l’amore di Masa e da non poter conoscere la morte: ma così giovane da soffrire di eiaculazione precoce, così giovane da perdere la verginità con un’artista di circo, così giovane da arrampicarsi fin dove non c'è più ritorno.



E, alla fine, la scoperta!
La scoperta che anche i tedeschi sono umani, più umani dei capretti, di tutti gli animali e ... di qualunque cosa subiva una disgrazia...

Sembra una favola, un bel racconto, divertente e un po’ folle: e invece, parla della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, dell’occupazione nazista della Cecoslovacchia.
Parla dell’orrore - ma in un altro modo.

Nel modo e nella forma dei grandi.


Tutte le immagini sono tratte dal film omonimo del 1966 diretto da Jirí Menzel.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of months ago, I bought this slim volume at the Globe Bookstore and Cafe in Prague on the last afternoon of a 9-day school tour with my 15-year old daughter and several of her classmates. We had perhaps 45 minutes in which to identify purchases, enjoy beverages, split a salad, and read passages to each other from the books we selected. At the time, I shared with her portions of one of the other books I bought, and saved this one until now. I will remember that afternoon, the Globe and the time we spent in each other's company in Prague for some time to come.

Closely Observed Trains takes place in Czechoslovakia near the end of WWII. First published in 1965 and one of Hrabal's best known novels, it is part coming-of-age, part war-is-hell, part fantastic. The first 80 pages reminded me of many, unremembered and unremarkable classics I've read through the years. The last five pages are unforgettable. This book is a 4-star read for me, in part, because, on every page, I recalled our time together in Prague and was grateful again for the opportunity to walk its streets, begin to appreciate its rich history and still recent experience of war and occupation, and to spend that time with my daughter. I will look for more Hrabal novels.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ‘great’ acts of ours
transformed us
to something else
otherwise
unknown, to us, then
becomes, our identity, now.
The darkness
our new attribute.
Ghosts of ourselves
we became
perhaps like
walking deaths
died somewhere long back
in our hearts and souls.



link: source


I came to know about Bohumil Hrabal only last year through reading his outstandingly dense, haunting but comic book- Too Loud a Solitude, perhaps that’s the way to describe his fiction since I see that my second brush with his prose brings out the similar feelings, if not the same. Humanity has been struggling with numerous vagaries of existence since the outbreak of civilization, some of the most profound oddities could be wars, holocausts, massacres, and others. In this little gem from the Czech master, we are thrown into the tumultuous days of World War II.


War, as we know, may affect humanity in unprecedented, unusual, unsettling, and undetermined ways; human beings may be ripped off what is considered as humanity, for it might come down to the basic survival instinct which is common among all animals per se. The common men, who otherwise encompass all good and evil, what underlines humanity, may get transformed into killing machines, with their emotions giving way to bear our condemned existence at any cost, so may unassumed affairs, unsaid conversations, unexplored avenues remain suspended in the hell of nothingness forever to be burned there.


How much margin we have between life and death there, I guess, both seem to be hanging through a delicate thread which may throw either of them at the disposal of humanity, within splits of a second? How could such death be absorbed, for, one does not get a chance for the realization? And it is not that they are already transformed into walking deaths, having died somewhere long ago, in their souls? The ‘great’ acts such as wars seem to beset the entire lives of men as these keep on haunting humanity even after the wars, for the wounds of such acts may stab you deep down all the way to your soul, recuperation from those mutilations does not come easy.


He was a man, too, like me, or like Mr Hubicka, like us he hadn’t any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other and brought each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other, and found a lot to talk about.


link: source


Milos Hrma is a reticent young man who tries to assume his existence amidst the harrowing and bombing settings of WWII wherein Germans are losing their control over Czechoslovakia. The story starts with wry and acerbic humor as we find the remains of a German plane hovering over the landscape. However, the reader is abruptly taken off guard and the humor is superseded by ironic pain with a tinge of black humor as we see the head of the stubborn grandfather of Hrma gets crushed to stardust by a German tank, apparently to stop their accession, though failing to solicit any comfort even after death as people consider him insane despite his ‘brave’ act.

’Turn around and go back, turn around and…’ And then the lieutenant gave a signal with his pennant, and the tank changed its mind and moved forward, but Grandfather never budged, and the tank ran over him and crushed his head, and after that there was nothing standing in the way of the German army.


Our narrator, Hrma braves himself to move forward through these clamorous and tormenting circumstances. He oscillates from his strive of defining himself to getting over his infidelities. The apprentice at a Czech railway station has to resolve his numerous worries ranging from his burdensome virginity, his unassumed love with Masha to scandals happening in the station-master’s office. However, the culprit, Mr. Hubicka enjoys the celebrity status in the town as he becomes a role model for youngsters after that scandal, and our narrator does not seem too unaffected by him. However, the author urges upon, in a sarcastic demeanor, the collapse of the youth who keeps its eyes shut to distressing and wounding realities of the county and fails to rise to the occasion, often takes refuge in timid games.

’The curse of this erotic century! Everything’s saturated with sex, nothing sex and erotic stimulants!


Closely Watched Trains is a coming-of-age tale of the protagonist- Milos Hrma, interspersed with elements of humor and sarcasm with the wit of the author certainly gets better of the readers, especially at the end, wherein, the tale leapfrogs to dense and serious affairs of humanity. Literature has got the ability to withstand the horrific acts of humanity, it may act as a mirror to us, which might reflect our inner selves to us. There are numerous references and allusions through the prose to religion, pigeon, rabbit rearing, to imprinting a woman’s body with official stamps, which reflects the author’s ability to seamlessly infuse digressions into prose, only to enhance its richness.


link: source


The novel may be having just eighty-odd pages but it doesn’t limit the artistic abilities of Hrabal, who has been able to create prose dense enough to emanate various facets of a young, tumultuous life in a war-ridden landscape. The faculty of the author to draw the readers' sympathy towards the protagonist is evidently visible, Hrma, who is a sensitive person with a tender heart, seeming to pass his existence through petty frolics and frivolities, is chosen by life itself to achieve undesired greatness eventually. Hrabal’s universe is a world that provides the weak, downtrodden to realize their true essence, to overcome his loneliness of existence through bearing the unbearable responsibility of being free, absolutely free; to realize the true, authentic existence of himself.

I was lying on him, and I heard peace and silence enter into him, I heard and felt everything stop, like a machine which has broken down.

4/5

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Noir Farce.

In the closing months of WW II in provincial Czech, the social system of the national railways copes with the German military, allied raids, and the sexual fetishes of the local dispatcher. Amidst the detritus of war - dead and dying live-stock, wrecked railway carriages, crashed fighter planes, the dead and wounded returning from the front - the station-master's concern is principally the well-being of his Polish pigeons and the sanctity of his Turkish-themed office.

But an undercurrent is also clear: 'The Germans are swine but they're our swine and they will be victorious and we will have a Free Europe' is the attitude of one German-speaking official. Resistance takes place but only about as casually as collaboration. Closely Watched Trains was first published in 1965 while Czechoslovakia was united and Communist. Soviet tanks were to roll through within three years during the Prague Spring. The theme of keeping one's head down with the dominant force must have caused a stir despite the black comedy that dominates the book.

What is important to all the characters is really not the outcome of the war, or even whether German or Czech is the official national language, but the experience of their own lives. Or inexperience, as the case may be. A young man's sexual inadequacy, a young woman's hopes of cinematic stardom, organisational advancement, the disciplinary process of the railways. Life, in other words, goes on, petty details are important even, perhaps especially, in the midst of chaos. Ultimately Hrabal's pointed irony is probably the only way to deal with the powerlessness in such an overwhelming condition.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Closely Watched Trains" is Hrabal’s post-war novella that describes the life of a young railroad apprentice, Miloš Hrma, living in Czechoslovakia in the last month of the German occupation during WWII. Hrabal toys around with the idea of watching and being watched, as our protagonist is closely watching the trains, the visible sign of German oppression, in his coming-of-age he is preoccupied with the idea of being watched, not for, as we would expect, political resistance, but sexual inadequacy. Or at least it is easier for him to think so. Troubled with the idea of not being man enough for premature ejaculation that occurred on his first attempt at sexual intercourse, he attempts suicide by slitting his writs.

“Three months ago I slashed my wrists, and on the face of it I had no reason to do such a thing, but I did have a reason, and I knew what it was, and I was only afraid that everyone who looked at me was guessing at what that reason could be. Hence these eyes behind every window. What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age? ”

Miloš is obsessed with one questing; ”Is he a man?” He is constructing the idea of his manhood in the ability to perform a sexual act, not in the ability to perform an act of courage in resisting the ruling evil that he has to watch every day at work while keeping his head down, which lingers in his subconscious. What, after all, makes a man?

Hrma is a sensitive person with a tender heart, that looks at the world with a sense of empathy, forced to watch German train, the closely watched ones that are carrying so much of Jewish population to their death. But this is never explicitly discussed by Miloš. The closes he gets to it is when he is, symbolically, crying over the train transportation of animals to slaughterhouses, being outraged by the conditions the Germans put them in. “Closely watched trains” and the horror that is carried by them not being openly acknowledged creates great tension in the novel, alleviated by the lighter themes of everyday life, and comical sexual intercourses.

Hrabal does something very interesting in introjection of the sexuality in the story. In the one sense, sexuality is a drive for life and passion, persisting in the occupied population under the war and smog of death, in people that are forced to collaborate with an evil regime. In coping with the uncertainty of war’s end people minimize stress by caring more about the experience of their own lives, than the fate of the world. Also, it helps create the darkly comic tone, a humoral note that helps in transcending the terrifying atmosphere of the moment. Also, sexual affairs bring to the characters not only the comic but a great moral relief. Living in the land occupied by Nazis these people are living in a moral dystopia. The evil has came to the power, the rights and wrongs are being perpetually twisted, and they have to serve the government that has laws that enable the killings of innocent. A lot of preexisting ethics and moral boundaries are being annihilated and rewritten before their eyes, as Nietzsche predicted, and in the station master's words: “Neither God nor myth, neither allegory nor symbol … We’re on our own in this world, so everything’s allowed.”

But, ironically the station-master forms this word not in reaction to the times, but in the reaction of sexual activity of one of the train station employees. What is perceived as sexual immorality gives a safe outlet to the outrage on the moral decadence of the times, resulting in this authentic, but redirected outburst: “The curse of this erotic century! Everything’s saturated with sex, nothing but sex and erotic stimulants!”

Which can make one think of how much of people’s misdoings are projected onto the strict moral rules of sexuality? Is sexuality a safe place for one’s and others’ moral condemnation, at times when we are not able to confess or see for ourselves the greater evil we are doing or ignoring? I'm reminiscent of the words of Jung, who observed that all sexual problems are at core spiritual, and vice versa.

Ventilating in the moral outrage station-master gives away the core point and the motive for his intense emotions, the atmosphere of terror in watching the trains that transport innocent people to death camps; “The more immorality and hedonism, the less cradles and the more coffins!’ ” But, ironically, all the characters at the station are closely watching, and shutting their eyes at the same time.

Our protagonist finds his relief at the end in the final act of rebellion against Germans, their trains, and the military. There he finds his true self and freedom, which makes one think that neurosis is not only caused by sexual, but also moral repressions.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Milan Kundera brought me here, and I'm so glad that he did. This novella, which I knew little about beforehand, other than it obviously featured trains, exceeded my expectations in just about every way possible. In a darkly comic tone, which moved from being relatively bleak one minute, to warm and almost chucklesome the next, Hrabal shows just why he left a big mark on European post-war literature, and helped influence many other writers in the process. Miloš Hrma, an innocent, slightly hapless young individual, is a railway dispatcher and signalman working at a Czech station in the mid 40s, and much of the narrative is an account of his misadventures doing his job, and trying to lose his virginity, something which caused him great embarrassment in the past leading him to attempt suicide. It's not everyday you come across a book featuring death, explosions, Nazis, cows and horses, premature ejaculation, and lines such as “The curse of this erotic century! Everything’s saturated with sex, nothing but sex and erotic stimulants!”. But that's what made this so great. It's borderline farcical at times, but still ashen and serious when it needs to be. I loved it! Why waste time on big fat bloated novels that end up going nowhere when vastly superior novellas like this are waiting to be gobbled up.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gratitude and Trigger Warnings

I’m profoundly grateful for the wonderful books I’ve discovered from the inspirational reviews of my GR friends, including Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude (see my 5* review HERE, and my shelf of friends’ reccs HERE).

I try to avoid reading reviews shortly before I read a book, not for fear of spoilers (my friends tend to avoid or hide those), and so their thoughts don’t frame my own reaction.

In this case, it would have been better if I had. It was not the right time for me to read about a suicide survivor, but I had no idea until I was part way through.

“I couldn’t recognise myself, I was looking for my own face but it wasn't there, as if I’d become someone else.” Thoughts after leaving hospital.

Image: Miloš looking in the mirror, from 1966 film (which I’ve not seen) (Source.)

There’s bawdy humour, beauty, and poignancy on these pages. It’s not primarily a depressing book, nor even one that focuses on suicidal ideation (though the attempt is described in oddly beautiful detail). Nevertheless, it compounded my lack of connection with Miloš Hrma and engagement with the story he told.
Infer nothing from my 3*: I was unable to rate it objectively.

Watching and Being Watched

It’s set during WW2, in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Miloš is a 22-year old trainee station guard (“despatcher”), where the “close surveillance” trains rumble through. He’s ever aware of being watched, and often mentions eyes. Of the refugees from the bombing of Dresden, he says:
“Not one of them blinked, as though the horror had cut off their eyelids”,
whereas the eyes of cows heading for slaughter were
“full of curiosity and grief”.

What Makes a Man?

“I was man enough until it came to the point of being a man.”

This is a bildungsroman, covering a short period of a troubled young man’s life. His family are not particularly popular in the small town. He’s terribly naive in sexual matters (catching a colleague in flagrante, he doesn't realise what he’s seen!), and describes his putative girlfriend, Masha, in fond and admiring terms, but not really sexual ones.

Unsurprisingly, fumbled intimacy beneath a photographer’s studio sign saying “Finished in five minutes” haunts him. The solutions are comical and perhaps a little shocking.

What Radicalises?

In 2019, we’re becoming used to the word incel to describe a young man whose sexual frustration festers into a toxic and sometimes literally explosive mix of hatred against women, minorities, authority, and the world in general. It’s the lack of sex that triggers abuse and mass shootings - a way to enforce their potency in a different way.

But sometimes the opposite is true:
“I should have the opportunity of doing something great, for I was no wilting lily now.”

The ending is shocking, beautiful, heartbreaking, inevitable, ambiguous (and I gather it’s rather different in the film):
“He was a man, too. Like me… he hadn’t any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other.”



Image: Miloš and probably Hubička or the station master, from 1966 film (which I’ve not seen) (Source.)

From Kafka, through Hrabal, to Baker

“They were doing their utmost to dredge up a realistic basis for a criminal charge of infringing personal liberty.”
The farcical disciplinary hearing is slightly Kafkaesque, though the person concerned knows what he’s accused of (and knows his guilt).

The greater similarity is with Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine (see my 4* review HERE) in the way seemingly ordinary sensations are described in minute detail: a plane breaking up and crashing, the varied sounds of trains rumbling through, a glint of light on prismatic snow crystals, blood dispersing in water, or the feel of fabric on the skin as you tighten an item with shiny buttons.

Quotes

• “In every crystal of snow there seemed to be an infinitely tiny second hand ticking, the snow crackled so in the brilliant sunlight, shimmering in many colours.”

• “It seemed strange to me that both these SS men were beautiful.”
• “I always had a horror of beautiful people.”

• “In a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out.”

• “The stars were palpitating in the sky.”

• “I had been predestined for another death than the one I had attempted.”

[Sawsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية للكاتب التشيكي بوهوميل هرابال وجمال السرد الذي يكمن في التفاصيل
الراوي ميلوش هرما الموظف المتمرن في سكك الحديد على تنظيم حركة القطارات
في محطة صغيرة في مقاطعة تشيكية قرب نهاية الحرب العالمية الثانية
يراقب القطارات تحت الحراسة المشددة التي تحمل المؤن والأسلحة لقوات الاحتلال الألمانية
ويحكي عن عمله وحياته وأسرته وعلاقته بحبيبته, ويصف تفاصيل كل مكان وحدث وشخصية
يعرض هرابال عبثية الحرب وضحاياها في لقطات مميزة ويكتب بأسلوب فكاهي جميل

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

La inocencia, la aparente ingenuidad, que es uno de los disfraces más eficaces que puede tomar la ironía, Hrabal la viste con una elegancia y una sutileza tal que es capaz de hacerte sonreír, enternecerte y estremecerte al tiempo.

[Mohammad Hrabal · Rating 3 out of 5]

من ابتدا فیلم بسیار زیبای این کتاب را به کارگردانی ییرژی منزل و سال 1966 دیدم که فوق العاده خوب بود. کتاب دیگر هرابال یعنی تنهایی پرهیاهو را هم خوانده بودم. در مورد ترجمه این کتاب (عدنان غریفی) حدس میزنم که ترجمه خوبی نیست و همچنین مطمئنم که کتاب سانسور شده است. به دوستان عزیز اکیدا توصیه میکنم که این ترجمه از کتاب را نخوانند. اگر می توانند انگلیسی آن را بخوانند و یا فیلم کتاب را ببینند. به کسانی هم که کتاب را مطالعه کرده اند توصیه اکید می کنم که فیلم آن را تهیه کنند و ببینند.

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 1 out of 5]

- عبثًا حاولت الإنسجام معها ولم استطع! عامل سكة قطار، تاريخ عائلته كسل على فشل، ثم رئيس المحطة والحمامات، و"هوبيكا" وختم مؤخرة عاملة التلغراف، فسخرية الالمان من التشيك، ثم تفجير التشيك لقطارهم (كجواب على السخرية) والشفقة عليهم لو كانوا قد بقوا ببلادهم ولم يأتوا الى التشيك! و"ماشا" وتجارب الجنس الاولى والتعلّم من النساء "الاكثر" خبرة...

- سخرية فومضة جميلة فضحكة فتفاهة ثم سخافة اخرى فروتين وملل ثم اختيارات وتركيب جملي مشتت من المترجم...

- قرأت بعض المراجعات للأصدقاء والمراجعين باللغة الإنكليزية وترجمت البعض من الإيطالية ويبدو ان الترجمة الى العربية لم تكن كما يجب.. لا ادري لكنني لم اجد شيئاً عليه القيمة في هذه الرواية!!

[Nicole~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The coming-of-age story of Milos Hrma - a young, naïve railwayman - unfolds in a small lethargic train station, set in North Bohemia, Prague during the last two weeks of WWII, 1945. Milos narrates a tale which covers a timespan of 48 hours in a series of flashbacks, where it is revealed how the scars on his wrists came to be and how three generations of Hrma men managed to besmirch their family name.

Milos's day is spent dreamily watching military trains pass through to the front transporting the injured and dying; displaced refugees who had lost their homes in bombings; even dead or dying animals - evoking a clear picture of the chaotic period as a result of the impending German collapse.

The plot moves surrealistically, from a natural to humorous manner: the daily lives and interactions of the townfolk; the histrionics of his forebears; the German Occupation and movement of Nazi troops from the front; Milos's humiliating 'first time' with his girlfriend that later prompted a suicide attempt; the licentious scene with dispatcher Hubička, inkstamping the derrière of the female telegraphist. I found such ribald scenes and periodic, foolish, digressive banter to be quite amusing, highlighting Hrabal's skill at veiling human drama with his distinctive sense of humor. About Milos's grandfather who thought himself a "hypnotist:"

In this tank waist-deep in the cabin stood an officer of the Reich, with a black beret with the death's- head badge and crossed bones on his head, and my grandfather kept on going steadily forward, straight toward this tank, with his hands stretched out, and his eyes spraying towards the Germans the thought: 'Turn around and go back!'
And really, that tank halted. The whole army stood still. Grandfather touched the leading tank with his outstretched fingers, and kept pouring out towards it the same suggestion: 'Turn around and go back, turn around and...' And then the lieutenant gave a signal with his pennant, and the tank changed its mind and moved forward, but grandfather never budged, and the tank ran over him and crushed his head, and after that there was nothing standing in the way of the German army.

Milos's youthful idealistic view of Hubička, and a personal, perhaps subconscious, drive to remove the stigma from his family name -particularly his grandfather's doomed effort- lead him to accept a dangerous mission that culminates in a dramatic heroic deed, as he mercilessly exclaims:

  "You should have sat at home on your arse..."

War fictionistas who have read All's Quiet on the Western Front would note echoes of a similar fateful and humanistic scene.

Bohumil Hrabal's short, postwar novel is a stunning blend of humor, humanity, tragedy and heroism, justifiably earning the appellation of "masterpiece." Highly recommend.

Other books I've read by Bohumil Hrabal here.



******

From wikipedia.org:

Bohumil Hrabal (Czech pronunciation: [ˈboɦumɪl ˈɦrabal]) (28 March 1914 – 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century. During the war, he worked as railway labourer and dispatcher in Kostomlaty, near Nymburk, an experience reflected in one of his best-known works Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Observed Trains).

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the last days of the WWII. The story is about the observations of the young Milos Hrma, an apprentice signalman for a railway station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia and his becoming an unlikely hero by fighting his own war against the Nazis.

This is my second book by Hrabal, which made me better to appreciate his style of writing. His books read like a drunk uncle would tell a story that has no beginning; a story both humorous and serious, in which the present jumps back to the past and back again; sometimes it verges on ramblings and often it hits upon an important subject.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel I read before this one was a short work translated from German, and this too is a short novel that I read in translation, this time from Czech. It’s set in the early months of 1945, in German occupied Czechoslovakia. Our lead character, Miloš Hrma, is an unhappy young man who is training to be a “train dispatcher”, which seems to be what’s known in Britain as a railway signalman. As the novel opens, Hrma has just gone back to work after a suicide attempt which followed his first intimate encounter with his girlfriend, during which our young railwayman let off steam too early. He feels humiliated about this and worries that he isn’t a “real man”. He’s also neurotic about the townsfolk, thinking that they are always watching him at work.

Most of the book is a slightly strange mix of farce and misery. There’s quite a bit of ribald humour around the amorous escapades of Hrma’s colleague, Hubička, although I can’t say as I laughed at any of it. The war is something that is talked about or which takes place at a distance, but which occasionally makes fleeting appearances at the station in the form of the trains that charge through. There is though a sudden change of mood during the last chapter, where the author delivers a powerful and memorable ending. That pushed my overall rating up. 3.5 stars rounded up to four.

[Laysee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Closely Watched Trains is a slender but tightly and skillfully written novella. There is not one superfluous word or allusion. Its economy of expression, darkly spiced with humor, is in sharp contrast to the seriousness of its intent – an anthem for doomed youth set in German occupied Czechoslovakia in 1945.

Bohumil Hrabal once worked as a railway laborer and this story about Milos Hrma, a 22-year-old apprentice railway dispatcher, seems to draw richly on his experience. Milos is a troubled young man who worries excessively about his manhood, which he most wishes to demonstrate toward Masha, his lady love. While he watches trains as part of his job, he thinks people are watching him. Milos behaves as if life is not worth living and Hrabal captures his despair with gentle lyricism. Yet it is quite clear that Milos wants above all to stay alive and show the world he is truly a man.

Life post World War II is bleak and Milos who watches the trains registers with his keen eye fragments of shattered lives in the carriages: blood stains, glass on the floor, a long bandage, a child’s striped ball, ailing or dead cattle. On the close surveillance medical trains, he feels a pang when he sees wounded soldiers who are boys his age or younger. Here is a poignant description: ‘And in this mobile sick-bay at which I was gazing, the strangest thing was the human eyes, the eyes of all those wounded soldiers. As though that agony there at the front, the agony they had inflicted on others and which others now were afflicting on them, had turned them into different people... They all peered through the windows into the dull countryside so attentively, with such childlike earnestness, as though they were passing through paradise itself, as though in my little station they saw a jewel-box.’ All this does not detract Milos from the beauty around him: the palpitating stars, radiant night, and crackling of frozen snow. Hrabal writes beautifully.

There is also in this novella a zest for life, a frivolity that is welcome and takes the edge off the harsh realities. This centers on Dispatcher Hubicka, Milos' immediate supervisor, whose romp with a sexy telegraphist makes him a celebrity and envy of the town. Milos looks upon Hubicka as an ideal, and that ironically is his undoing.

I felt tenderly toward Milos who is given to solitude. He is a young man with a whole life laid before him. He has no lofty ambition. His needs are primal. But it seems he is predestined for a mission he would not want to be part of if he could only anticipate the cost to himself.

This tiny but powerful book brings to the fore the pathos of war. Soldiers on opposing sides are just sons of mothers who cannot rest until their children are home safe. Time and again, this shared humanity is obliterated in war times and brought to awareness only too late.

Read Closely Watched Trains. Gravity and frivolity dwell side by side in unimaginable harmony.

[Tony]

My last book of the year and read under less than ideal circumstances, to-wit: christmas stuff. So six days to read 85 pages, with a lot of entertainment and responsibility swirling around. I probably missed the larger import, but I did not miss one of the greatest endings of all time.

[Paula Mota · Rating 2 out of 5]

- Chamo-me Milos Hrma – disse eu titubeando. - Sabe, cortei os pulsos porque parece que sofro de ejaculação precoce. Mas não é verdade. É verdade que murchei como um lírio no momento decisivo em que estava com a minha amiga, mas mesmo assim sou um homem.
- Nunca foi para a cama com uma mulher? – espantou-se Viktoria Freie.
- Não, só tentei. É por isso que lhe peço que me aconselhe...

E a generosa tirolesa, “que tinha tanto um belo traseiro como uns belos peitos” e que o conhece há meia dúzia de minutos, deslumbrada por tanto sex-appeal, trata logo de lhe saltar para cima e comprovar se ele é ou não homem. E é basicamente nos desaires sexuais do protagonista e nas proezas sexuais de um seu colega que assenta a obra “Comboios Rigorosamente Vigiados”, com uma ou outra manobra de sinalização na estação e a passagem de comboios de soldados e vagões cheios de animais moribundos e putrefactos.
Também eu murcho aos poucos quando leio Bohumil Hrabal, já que os seus livros abrem em grande e vão perdendo o interesse e o sentido à medida que progridem, conseguindo sempre incluir uma cena escatológica. Se em “Uma Solidão Demasiado Ruidosa” atira airosamente caca por todo o lado, aqui faz a proeza de encharcar uma personagem em urina. Há um nome para esta tara...

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tomorrow I’m going back on duty. Again I shall stand by the double track in my little station, where all the trains running from west to east are signalized by odd numbers, according to the schedule, and all the trains from west to east by even numbers

Milos Hrma, a young man training to be a railroad dispatcher in a small Czech town close to the German border in the year 1945, is going back on duty after a three month hiatus, following a failed suicide attempt.

What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age?

A lot, apparently! Milos is a sensitive soul, crying over the maltreatment of animals passing through the station on their way to the slaughterhouse. He is witnessing the turning tide of the war, with more trains carrying casualties heading back to Germany while heavily guarded, secretive munitions trains are heading towards the ever approaching frontline.
Most of all, Milos is worried about his maturity, about being accepted by his peers and about doing his job properly. In his family, there is a long tradition of the men being regarded as parasites by the neighbours: his great-grandfather was crippled very young in a conflict in Prague, and lived a long life on his pension, drinking and laughing at his hard-working peers; his grandfather joined the circus and became a hypnotist and died in a futile attempt to stop the invasion of his homeland by Panzer tanks by the power of his mind alone; his father got his pension early in life after working hard as a train conductor and is now running a scrapyard.

Milos, and his mother, are very proud of his brand-new uniform, although his dispatch mentor and his station master are hardly suitable as role models. Mr. Lansky grows pigeons in the back of the station, and at feeding time he stretches out his arms like a Christ figure, to be covered in fluttering wings. Mr Hubicka is a libertine and a non-conformist, infamous all over the railway line for a misuse of official stamps

Not to make a long story of it, they were on night duty together, and Dispatcher Hubicka bowled Virginia over, and then turned up her skirt and printed all our station stamps, one after another, all over our telegraphist’s backside. Even the date stamp he stuck on there! But in the morning, when Virginia got home, her mother read all those stamps printed on her, and came running here immediately, threatening to complain to the Gestapo!

Milos Hrma’s insecurities are exacerbated as soon as he falls in love with a fellow apprentice, the vivacious Masha. An incident involving what Milos euphemistically calls ‘rubbing the velvet off your antlers’ that came to a conclusion in a precocious manner is in fact the primary cause of his suicide attempt.
Now, as one of those closely supervised military transports is scheduled to pass through their little station, Milos Hrma has the chance to prove that he is both a man and a patriot, as underground agents plan to sabotage it. Salvation may come from the hands of a beautiful woman symbolically named Victoria Freie.

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This is a very short novel / longish novella, but its length has very little to do with its artistic value. Bohumil Hrabal has the poetic touch that can speak volumes in the space of two heartbeats, using symbols and iconic imagery to fill in the gaps in the facts. A carton airplane used as a background prop in a photo studio where Milos and Masha spend their first night together points out both to the power of dreams and to the destruction of hope when it is blown to pieces in a bombardment.

The horror of war comes through not in accounts of battles or in the number of casualties, but in details of the aftermath, as witnessed by Milos on the trains that pass through his station and, in one case, in the eyes of survivors from the carpet-bombing of Dresden.

I looked into one compartment, everywhere it was the same. Shattered glass on the floor, combs, torn-off buttons, some with fabric still attached, a whole sleeve from a military coat, blood-stained pants, a handkerchief once wet with blood, scattered chessmen, a board for the dice game called ‘Don’t be angry, lad!’, a round mirror, a mouth-organ, letters spattered with snow, a long bandage and a child’s striped ball. I picked up one letter, decorated with the print of a hobnailed military boot. Mein Lieber Schnucki Tucki! the letter began, and ended: Deine Luise. And the print of a girl’s lips. In a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out. On the floor lay two dead rooks.

Life and death are inseparable in those final days of a world conflict, and our hearts go out to Milos as he tries to rise up to the occasion and prove to himself he is a grown man. Whatever comedy the situations and the style of narration may warrant are always playing out in the shadow of that fast approaching train of doom.

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Over the summer, as I got onto Netflix for a couple of months, I was looking in vain for classic movies worth watching, until I saw Jiry Menzel’s 1966 adaptation was available. The movie follows the novella very closely, which is not surprising, seeing as the author contributed directly to the screenplay. I would recommend either the film or the novella, or both together: it’s a memorable black comedy that deserves wider recognition.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorka, crnohumorna, centralnoevropska, groteskna farsa raskošno talentovanog pisca.

Pripovedanje je najuverljivije kad je najneumerenije. (Razbacani životi, gužva, klanica, seksualne frustracije, vozovi koji uvek kasne a dolaze na vreme, kanabei, mahagoni, ožiljci.)

A nekada blesne lirsko iznenađenje. Kao kada se svakoj pahuljici pripisuju minijaturne sekundare koje se pokreću sunčevim svetlom.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Evinizde oturup kalsaydınız ya götünüzün üstünde..."

Çek yazar Bohumil Hrabal'ın daha önce okuduğum iki kitabını da çok sevmiştim, küçük novellası Sıkı Kontrol Edilen Trenler'de de durum değişmedi. Her şeyle alay eden, savaşın absürtlüğünü ve çelişkilerini insanın yüzüne yüzüne vuran bir kitap, yukarıda alıntıladığım son cümlesi de zaten bunu gösteriyor bence. Hakeza kitabın adı da aynı şekilde: sıkı kontrol edilen trenler sıkı filan kontrol edilmiyor, ki zaten bütün mesele de bu.

1945 yılındayız, İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın son günleri. Almanlar yavaş yavaş yenilgiye doğru ilerlerken biz Çekoslovakya'da, sınıra çok yakın bir tren istasyonundayız. İstasyonda çalışan genç ve bakir Miloş'un ağzından dinliyoruz hikayeyi. Karşısına çıkan her kadınla flört eden istasyon şefinden telgrafçı kıza, kendiyle kafayı bozmuş müdürden kazları hamurla beslemeye kafayı takmış karısına bir dizi tuhaf karakterimiz var. Anlatıcımız Miloş da tuhaf elbette; koca, yıkıcı savaşın göbeğinde kim olduğunu bulmaya çalışan, ziyadesiyle duygusal, kendi hislerini ve bedenini tanımaya çalışan bir genç adam.

İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın en sarsıcı olaylarından olan meşhur Dresden Bombardımanı'nın da anlatıldığı kitap, bir savaş romanına göre epeyce de komik. Hrabal küçük küçük detaylarda sistemi, savaşı, bürokrasiyi öyle güzel alaya alıyor ki. Okuyanlar herhalde kalçaya basılan istasyon mühürlerini hiç unutmayacaktır, ben unutmayacağım en azından!

Miloş'un kendi erkekliğine dair sorgulamaları da bence ayrıca nefisti. Etrafı ölü bedenlerle çevrili bir genç adamın kendi bedeniyle kurduğu / kuramadığı ilişkiyi, bunun ona ettiklerini müthiş incelikli biçimde anlatıyor yazar.

Ve tabii finali - spoiler olmaması için bir şey demiyorum ama unutulmaz bir finalle bitiyor hikaye.

Ezcümle, çok severek okudum. Beni Hrabal ile (tabii ki) Milan Kundera tanıştırmıştı. Keşke başka eserleri de dilimize çevrilse de, ilişkimizi derinleştirebilsek temennimle bitireyim.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hats off to this quasi-debut by Czech writer Hrabal (1914-1997). In a short story, barely 70 pages, he perfectly captures the oppressive atmosphere of the end of the war, in the 1945 German-occupied Czechoslovakia. It takes a while before we get the different storylines together, a nice formal reference to the intertwining tracks in the train station where the main character, the 22-year-old Milos Hrma is a signalman, and where trains of the German occupier – most of them with wounded military - occasionally whiz through like shadows in the night. Milos' feverish monologue, with ironic and absurd touches, casually connects his coming-of-age (he has just had a failed suicide attempt) with the heroism of the resistance against the Nazis. Though not an overall success (a few loose ends), this short novel never falls into cheap rhetoric, on the contrary, the dark and slightly absurd atmosphere of the very condensed story manages to resonate. Quite extraordinary.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clocking in at 84 pages, this novelette by Bohumil Hrabal belongs to the light flyweight category. But boy, does it pack a punch!

The story is told in first person by twenty-two-year-old Milos Hrma, a trainee dispatcher at a sleepy little railway station in Czechoslovakia at the fag end of World War II. Germans have already lost control of the air space, and they are halfway en route to losing the battle on the ground too. Milos is tasked with flagging of trains carrying soldiers, goods, ammunition and cattle to the war front - and those returning with the wounded and the dead. He is a virgin who suffered an erectile dysfunction while trying to copulate with his cousin Masha and subsequently attempted suicide - his main worry, in the midst of war, is getting laid.

The book is populated with weird characters. Milos's grandfather who tries to stop the Germans using hypnotism and gets crushed under a tank: the station master Lansky with his fetish for breeding pigeons: his wife who takes pleasure in the slow slaughter of rabbits: Dispatcher Hubicka who stamps the backside of the station telegraph operator Virginia with the station stamps, as forfeit for losing a game... The novel here straddles a fine line between black comedy and the absurd. But soon it gathers focus, as the visions get more and more disturbing (the descriptions of maimed cattle are especially distressing to read) and we can sense tragedy approaching.

The trains carrying ammunition to the front are the ones which have to be closely watched, to prevent sabotage. Ironically, the author forces us to watch all the trains closely, and all the misery and destruction they carry. Milos's initial sexual frustration evokes a sense of stasis, so his ultimate success to prove himself a man, when it comes linked to mass destruction, seems a fitting denouement: he loses his virginity and with it, himself. The ending is almost unspeakably cruel - yet somehow appropriate. This story can only end in this way.

Now I need to watch the film based on this book!

[João Reis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This leaves you speechless. It resembled a journey to my own soul.

[Dagio_maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Mi dico, tanto i tedeschi sono matti.
Matti pericolosi.
Anche io ero un po’ matto, ma a danno mio, mentre i tedeschi sempre a danno degli altri."


Letteralmente il titolo sarebbe: "Treni acutamente seguiti".
Così veniva segnalata ai ferrovieri l'attenzione particolare che si doveva a dare a treni carichi di ogni sorta di arma e munizione.
Treni che dovevano avere sempre il semaforo verde: precedenza assoluta alla morte!

In un'amalgama di tragicità e comicità si racconta questa storia di cui il protagonista é Milosh Hrma: un ferroviere apprendista che torna al suo lavoro dopo un tentativo di suicidio.
Tra personaggi stravaganti e situazioni grottesche Milosh vuole diventare uomo. Emblematicamente il nome della donna che porterà soddisfazione al ragazzo è (Vittoria Libera..). e nel momento dell'orgasmo i piaceri del corpo si confondono e si fondono con i boati della bombe:

"Dresda brucia!"

Destini individuali e corso della Storia s'intrecciano e rendono protagonista un giovane ferroviere che non vuole più proteggere la morte che passa sferragliando sulle rotaie ma, per una volta, fermarla e cantare un inno alla vita.

[Tsung · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a surprising book. Not quite the grandiosity of I Served the King of England or the charm of Too Loud a Solitude, yet there is something different about this slender book of 84 pages. So unobtrusive is this book, that you might miss it on a shelf full of bigger books. Yet for a short book, it speaks volumes.

Bohumil Hrabal is a great story teller. His inimitable style is evident from the first page. It is cheeky, hilarious, irreverent, naughty and ribald. But it is not all lightheartedness and he can give his tales a darker, more somber spin. The amazing thing is how he hides the gruesomeness amidst the frivolity, presenting catastrophic events innocuously and how he manages to change the tone of the book without being noticed.

Set in 1945 in a Czech town, the Germans are on the back foot, but they are still making their presence felt. These German, closely watched trains, still pass through the train station and are given priority in passage. We follow the exploits of the station staff. The central figure is the hapless Milo Hrma, an unassuming, insecure young man with an embarrassing family history. He works at the station along with larger than life characters, including the pigeon-covered station master Lansky, the randy, libidinous dispatcher Hubicka, the floozy telegraphist Virginia and the conductress Masha. Despite their foibles and absurdities, there is a touch of longing and vulnerability which makes them human and worthy of empathy.

Tucked between the hilarious tales were dark episodes. Two events stood out in particular. Living with the shame of a foolish grandfather and great grandfather, and the humiliation of not being able to perform with Masha, the love of his life, Milo attempted suicide. As he lay in the bathtub with both wrists slashed, it is described so artistically that it is easy to overlook the horror of it. …as though someone was drawing out from my wrists a long, feathery red bandage, a filmy, dancing veil… The second event was Milo being threatened by German soldiers. Ironically, it was the scars from his suicide attempt that got him off the hook.

Amongst his books, this novel is possibly Hrabal’s most powerful statement about war. While the characters express anti-German sentiment, Hrabal adds a different dimension to it. Juxtaposed in the background was the Allied devastation of Dresden. But now, as these Dresdeners came flocking here out of their city, I could no longer pity them, nobody could pity them, except they themselves. And those Germans knew it. Now one of them burst out weeping, in such a strange way, almost cooing, like the station-master’s pigeons when the raid disturbed them, and then his weeping became human, and only then did his body relax. And the other Germans began to blow their noses, and then they all burst into tears, every one in a different way, but fundamentally this was human crying, lamentation over what had happened.

Then a twist in the plot. Milo, aided by Hubicka, turns from zero to hero, becoming a terrorist of sorts, bombing an ammunition laden closely watched train. Milo gets shot by a German soldier and shoots him in return. As he lay in the ditch, he has a revelation. He was a man, too, like me, or like Mr Hubicka, like us he hadn’t any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other and brought each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other, and found a lot to talk about.

”Sollten Sie am Arsch zu Hause sitzen.”

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally written in Czech. I have a suspicion this translation by Edith Pargeter lost a lot, but it is still good enough for me for a perfect GR score. DREAMLIKE, it there’s a word for it. Reading it gave me this experience: when disparate dreams come in sequence at night, each one understood completely as they pass before the eyes which open when one is asleep, each dream segment seeking to connect with the others, then backing off, one at a time, as if saying goodbye, yet making wordless promises to return when your need to remember comes. Then you wake up with the residual memory of your experience. And in those lazy moments between sleep and complete wakefulness you say to yourself that you will remember this dream, so funny, or sad, or strange. Your father, long gone, laughing at some joke, flashing his small, rotten teeth in glee. What could this mean? You will tell your wife later…But then you forget.

Imagine if you could write like Bohumil Hrabal and make your readers feel as if they are WATCHING such dreams. They are no longer the dreamers, but an audience. Probably even the dreamt of, watching themselves live inside other people’s subconscious, seeing themselves reflected in a mirror.

[Hux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet coming-of-age story about a boy who, during the final stages of the second world war, works as a station guard at an isolated train station with his two colleagues. He details the comings and goings of various trains, those including goods, cattle and people. He tells us about his life in sporadic bursts and usually out of chronological order (which can occasionally be jarring), especially relating his trials and tribulations regarding losing his virginity and the failed suicide attempt that followed his premature ejaculation. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he endeavours to find a way to avoid working for a living and though not as successful as his forebears, he feels that he is ultimately doing a pretty good job of it.

The writing is crisp and clear, never too flowery or dense, and it goes by at a pace. The final chapter detailing his encounter with a German soldier has a great deal of pathos to it and leaves us with a feeling that Milos has never really been given a chance to live. Finally losing his virginity to an older woman who, more than anything, is simply doing him a favour, does, at least, give him a sense of becoming a man.

I would class this very short novella as more charming than profound. It's definitely worth a read and explores various themes such as war, loss, wasted potential, and heroism but never anything more than that. It's a gentle and thoughtful window into a time that's long gone.

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short novella exquisitely written, both funny and tragic. A shame that there was not more as the characters and situation are both one that you would be happy to spend much more time with.

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Gürültülü Yalnızlık” ile tanıştığım Çek yazar ile iyi bir başlangıç yapmamıştım. Ama bu kısa romanını çok beğendim. Mizah en iyi direnme yöntemidir, kara mizah ile buna düşünme eylemi de ekleniyor. Hrabal kara mizahı mükemmel kullanarak 2 Dünya Savaşını, Almanları, kendi vatandaşlarını, bürokrasiyi, insan karakterini sarakaya alıyor. Keyifle okunuyor, öneririm.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

A coming-of-age story of a young railwayman in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was a Czech writer said to be the greatest Czech novelist of the 20th century. Previous to this book, the only popular writer I have read was Milan Kundera (born 1929). In this book's back cover, this is what Kundera says about the book:

"an incredible union of earthly humor and baroque imagination."

. Although this is true, I think Kundera's oversimplification of the novel's central idea does not do enough justice to what this book is all about.

The story opens with Miloš Hrma enjoying his new railway man uniform. It is his first day at work as a predecessor of his father who has just retired as a railwayman. He is still a virgin and so he is being picked on by his older co-worker, train dispatcher Hubička. He has a crush on conductor Máša but when they make out, he ejaculated prematurely. So Hubička arranges for a Viktoria Freie, a Resistance spy to teach Miloš how to properly make love to a woman.

All these with Hitler's army and the repression of Czechoslovakia serving as a backdrop. I've read many books about the Holocaust including the 1959 Gunter Grass' opus The Tin Drum. Although I liked those books that directly tackle Holocaust, like Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List (4 stars), Ellie Wiesel's Night (4 stars), Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz (4 stars), etc., especially because of the movies too, I think I have read so many of them that I have in a way already have a solid idea on what when on in the concentration camps. So, if there is a novel that is set outside the concentration camp especially in the German occupied countries, it is a welcome relief.

What makes this book remarkable are the parts where the author concentrates on what's going on in the mind of his protagonist. The innocence of a young man who is idolizing this happy-go-lucky father and the sexual awakening is probably reflective of the countries that fall in Hitler's claw. Did countries at that time become disillusioned as they became powerless? This novel seems to be telling me that. This is something similar to the young people in the Philippines when the Americans or Japanese colonized the country during the tumultuous World War II.

I agree with Wiki that Hrabal is a great novelist. This book is just thin and short but it is huge in message and can be interpreted in so many ways that if you don't find it great, I am not sure which book you can classify as that.