Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most beloved and accessible works. Closely Watched Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Miloš Hrma, a timid young railroad apprentice who ins
In 1892, at the height of his prodigious powers, Anton Dvorak was persuaded to leave his native Bohemia to come to New York to be director of the National Conservatory for Music. This splendid novel tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair
The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch
Josef Skvorecky, internationally acclaimed for his rich prose and expansive vision, spins a beguiling comical tale of army life under foreign occupation. The Republic of Whores takes place on an army base in rural Czechoslovakia, where the draftees of the
This energetic and hilarious novel is made even more important by the current final thawing of the long, Communist winter in Czechoslovakia. Moving between 1948, when our hero Danny Smiřický falls asleep in church while a miraculous event occurs, and 19
The two haunting, poetic novellas that comprise The Bass Saxophone brilliantly evoke the comedy and sadness of life under the Nazi and Soviet dictatorships. They are prefaced by a remarkable memoir of Skvorecky's jazz-obsessed youth. Jazz is a symbol of f
