Hrabal, Bohumil

▪ 1998

      Czech writer (b. March 28, 1914, Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary [now Brno, Czech Rep.]—d. Feb. 3, 1997, Prague, Czech Rep.), was the author of wry, imaginative, and slightly surreal comic stories about a variety of nonconformist people. His works gained attention in the West when the film Closely Watched Trains (1966), the screenplay of which he had based on his novel Ostre sledované vlaky (1965), won the Academy Award for best foreign film. Hrabal's law studies at Charles University, Prague, were interrupted by World War II, when he worked on the railway. Though he received a doctorate in 1946, he never practiced law and instead took jobs as a traveling salesman, steelworker, warehouse worker, and stagehand until the early 1960s, when he devoted himself to writing. A volume of Hrabal's short stories, Perlicka na dn (1963; "A Pearl at the Bottom"), brought him instant popularity and was soon followed by another short-story collection, Pábitelé (1964; "Palaverers"); a 90-page book about an elderly man's life story, told in a single sentence, Tanecní hodiny pro starí a pokrocilé (1964; Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, 1995); and a third short-story collection, Automat sv t (1966; The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, 1975). He had published several more short-story collections by the time of the Prague Spring of 1968, but then the Warsaw Pact forces invaded and put an end to the democracy movement, and Hrabal was forced to publish his works clandestinely. With the end of Soviet domination in 1989, however, his works from the 1970s could finally be published in his homeland. Among these were Hrabal's autobiographical trilogy M stecko, kde se zstavil cas (1989; The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, 1993), P ríli hlucná samota (1989; Too Loud a Solitude, 1990), and Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (1990; I Served the King of England, 1989).

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▪ Czech author

born March 28, 1914, Brno, Czech.

died Feb. 3, 1997, Prague

      Czech author of comic, nearly surreal tales about poor workers, eccentrics, failures, and nonconformists.

      In his youth Hrabal was influenced by a highly talkative uncle who arrived for a two-week visit and stayed 40 years. Though Hrabal received a law degree from Charles University, he never practiced; instead, he worked as a salesman, in a theatre, and at factory and office jobs. His early short stories collected in Perlička na dně (1963; A Pearl at the Bottom), Pábitelé (1964; Palaverers), and Automat svět (1966; The Death of Mr. Baltisberger) are plotless, darkly humorous, free-association anecdotes, typically about social misfits and happily disreputable folk. In Tanečni hodiny pro starší a pokrocǐilé (1964; Dancing Lessons for Seniors and the Advanced), an elderly man tells his life story in one 90-page, unfinished sentence. His best-known work is his most conventional in form: the novel Ostře sledované vlaky (1964; Closely Watched Trains), in which a youth's comic problems end with heroic martyrdom. Hrabal subsequently adapted the work as a screenplay, which won the 1967 Academy Award for best foreign film.

      Hrabal's unconventional writings were banned after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1969, and his autobiographical works describe his fear of the secret police. After his country achieved independence in 1989, Hrabal's underground works from the 1970s were at last published there, including Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England) and Příliš hlučná samota (Too Loud a Solitude).

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