The directory «Plots»

Hrabal Bohumil
(1914—1997)

Bohumil Hrabal was a famous Czech writer. Born in Brno-Židenice, Moravia, raised in Nymburk brewery as the manager's step-son, 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, which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing then. His best known novel was Closely Watched Trains (1965) (Ostře sledované vlaky), which was made into a film by Czech director Jiří Menzel. Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to 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 figured in more than one of his books.

He wrote with an expressive, highly visual - 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 and Karel Čapek - who like him were imaginative and very funny satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages.

Ghana, 2000, Film «Larks on a String» (by novel of Hrabal)