The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War

by Jaroslav Hasek


Formats

Softcover
£12.82
Softcover
£12.82

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 12/06/2000

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 260
ISBN : 9781585004287

About the Book

Švejk represents one of the most unique and successful survival strategies ever conceived by man.

Joseph Heller said that if it weren’t for his having read The Good Soldier Švejk he would never had written his American novel Catch-22.

The only Czech book on most 100 Best Books of the 20th Century lists.

This is a new translation by Zdenek K. Sadlon and Emmett M. Joyce.

The Good Soldier Švejk is a picaresque series of tales about an ordinary man's successful quest to survive, and to enjoy life in the face of the endless absurdities imposed on him by the effects of the complex institutions of modern society that magnify the rational and moral shortcomings of individuals in direct proportion to their positions in the hierarchies they are a part of.

"Like Diogenes, Švejk lingers at the margins of an unfriendly society against which he is defending his independent existence." - Peter Steiner

"Those people who wanted the novel banned in the newly independent Czechoslovakia (after World War I) and elsewhere, some of whom succeeded, were quite correct to see it as more than a satire on war and militarism (although it is that, as well, of course)—the book is a very funny but unrelentingly savage assault on the very idea of bureaucratic officialdom as a human enterprise conferring benefits on those who live under its control and, equally important, on the various justifications such bureaucracies offer for their own existence." - Ian Johnston


About the Author

Jaroslav Hašek (b. April 30, 1883, Prague ― d. January 3, 1923, Lipnice, Czechoslovakia.) Czech writer best known for The Good Soldier Švejk, considered one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing.

Hašek worked in Prague as a bank clerk, although at 17 he was already writing satirical articles for Czech newspapers. He soon abandoned business for literary career, and before World War I he published a volume of poetry, Májové výkřiky, (1903; "Shouts in May") and wrote 16 volumes of short stories, of which Dobrý voják Švejk a jiné podivné historky (1912; "Good Soldier Švejk and Other Strange Stories") is among the best known. From 1904-07 he was an editor of anarchist publications. Drafted into the Austrio-Hungarian Army, Hašek was captured on the Russian front during World War I and was made a prisoner of war. While in Russia he became a member of the Czech liberation army but later joined the Bolsheviks, for whom he wrote Communist propaganda. Upon returning to Prague, the capital of the newly created country of Czechoslovakia, he devoted himself to writing Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války1920-23; The Good Soldier Schweik, 1930). It was intended to be a six-volume work, but only four were completed by the time of his death.

Encyclopedia Britannica

One of Hašek’s biographers, Emmanuel Frynta, writes:

"He was one of that generation which fully fought with the problems of the modern world. He was one of the artists at the start of the century who so splendidly cast light on the question of a live, valid, meaningful art worthy of the time. He was a curious, not easily understood person, too mobile and opaque for portrayal. As a creator, (he was) seemingly careless, natural, (and) spontaneous, . . . but, in reality (he was) sharply discerning and refined in his specific type of non-literariness . . . (he) was working farsightedly in the field of language and style, with something that was to become the shape of (the) speech of the century."

Hašek’s life was much wilder and interesting than one can glean from the above excerpts. To learn more about the writer of the vastly popular Good Soldier Švejk, read the Bad Bohemian: The life of Jaroslav Hašek by Cecil Parrott (Bodley Head, London, 1978).