I Served the King of England OBE/R by Hrabal
In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War I Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia.First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel (The New York Times), telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War I. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780151457458 |
| ISBN 10 | 015145745X |
| Title | I Served the King of England OBE/R |
| Author | Hrabal |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Cengage Learning EMEA |
| Year published | 1989-05-01 |
| Number of pages | 243 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |