Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
For gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka's gross misuse of the station's official stamps upon the telegraphist's anatomy. Beside these, Milos's part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair.
Closely Watched Trains, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a masterpiece that fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of the twentieth century.
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Of Mice and Men
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The Great Gatsby
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A Month in the Country
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Giovanni's Room
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East of Eden
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An Inspector Calls and Other Plays
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In Cold Blood
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A Streetcar Named Desire
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Animal Farm
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Alone in Berlin
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Wide Sargasso Sea
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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
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The Grapes of Wrath
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The Man in the High Castle
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On the Road
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Nineteen Eighty-Four
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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Lolita
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Brideshead Revisited
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The Haunting of Hill House
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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A Clockwork Orange
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Orientalism
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
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The Crucible
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Ways of Seeing
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
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Tokyo Express
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A Confederacy of Dunces
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Death of a Salesman
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The Wretched of the Earth
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The Lonely Londoners
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Things Fall Apart
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Down and Out in Paris and London
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Dubliners
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
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The Night Manager
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Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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The Myth of Sisyphus
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
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Mrs Dalloway
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Caliban and the Witch
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The Road to Wigan Pier
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Homage to Catalonia
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Ulysses
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The Go-between
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I Served The King Of England
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Closely Observed Trains
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Too Loud A Solitude
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All My Cats
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Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
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Total Fears
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Cutting It Short
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The Death of Mr. Baltisberger
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The Little Town Where Time Stood Still
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The Tender Barbarian
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Rambling On
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Mr Kafka
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Ich habe den englischen König bedient
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In-House Weddings
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The Gentle Barbarian
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Yo Servi Al Rey de Inglaterra
Hrabal bounces and floatsHis mode is a sort of dancing realism, somewhere between fairy tale and satire. He is a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail. We should read him -- Julian Barnes
Hrabal, to my mind, is one of the greatest European prose writers -- Philip Roth
One of the most authentic incarnations of magical Prague; an incredible union of earthy humour and baroque imagination... What is unique about Hrabal is his capacity for joy -- Milan Kundera
Hrabal's comedy is completely paradoxical. Holding in balance limitless desire and limited satisfaction, it is both rebellious and fatalistic, restless and wise -- James Wood * London Review of Books *
A poignant, humorous tale * New York Times Book Review *
Hrabal, to my mind, is one of the greatest European prose writers -- Philip Roth
One of the most authentic incarnations of magical Prague; an incredible union of earthy humour and baroque imagination... What is unique about Hrabal is his capacity for joy -- Milan Kundera
Hrabal's comedy is completely paradoxical. Holding in balance limitless desire and limited satisfaction, it is both rebellious and fatalistic, restless and wise -- James Wood * London Review of Books *
A poignant, humorous tale * New York Times Book Review *
Bohumil Hrabal was one of the most important and admired Czech writers of the twentieth century. He was born and raised in Brno in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914. After working as a railway labourer, insurance agent, travelling salesman, manual labourer, paper-packer and stagehand, he published a collection of poetry that was quickly withdrawn by the communist regime. His best-known books include I Served the King of England, Closely Watched Trains (made into an Academy Award-winning film directed by Jiri Menzel) and Too Loud a Solitude. In 1997, he fell to his death from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital, apparently trying to feed the pigeons.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780241290224 |
| ISBN 10 | 0241290228 |
| Title | Closely Watched Trains |
| Author | Bohumil Hrabal |
| Series | Penguin Modern Classics |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2017-03-30 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |