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Readers' rating:
Published May 2014
260 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
By the writer Milan Kundera called Czechoslovakia's greatest contemporary writer comes a novel (now in English for the first time) peopled with eccentric, unforgettable inhabitants of a home for the elderly who reminisce about their lives and their changing country. Written with a keen eye for the absurd and sprinkled with dialogue that captures the poignancy of the everyday, this novel allows us into the mind of an elderly woman coming to terms with the passing of time.
"Starred Review. A surreal and loquacious tale... [Hrabal's] long, lyrical sentences (each chapter consists of a single paragraph) are not only eloquently constructed, but also as spirited as the scenes they illustrate." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. [A] uniquely compelling blend of parable, fantasy, social realism and testament to the power of storytelling...the voice of the narrator is spellbinding, even as the reader becomes less sure of her credibility...An enchanting novel, full of life, about the end of life." - Kirkus
"There are pages of queer magic unlike anything else currently being done with words." - The Guardian (UK)
"What Hrabal has created is an informal history of the indomitable Czech spirit. And perhaps... the human spirit." - The Times (UK)
"Hrabal is a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humour and hushed tenderness of detail." - Julian Barnes
"Hrabal, to my mind, is one of the greatest living European prose writers." - Philip Roth, 1990
This information about Harlequin's Millions was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) worked as a railway dispatcher during the Nazi occupation of then-Czechoslovakia, a traveling salesman, a steelworker, a recycling mill worker, and a stagehand. His novels, which include Too Loud a Solitude, Closely Watched Trains, and I Served the King of England, were censored under the Communist regime and have since been translated into nearly thirty languages. He fell to his death from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital, apparently trying to feed the pigeons.
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