| I Served the King of England Contributor(s): Hrabal, Bohumil (Author), Wilson, Paul (Translator) |
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ISBN: 081121687X ISBN-13: 9780811216876 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $16.16 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2007 Annotation: Isolated and impoverished, Ditie comes to a greater understanding of good and evil, and of his place in the vortex of history. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Historical - World War Ii - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2007001145 |
| Series: New Directions Classics |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 6.58" W x 7.96" (0.60 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel (The New York Times), telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history. |
Contributor Bio(s): Hrabal, Bohumil: - Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was born in Moravia. He is the author of such classics as Closely Watched Trains (made into an Academy-Award winning film by Jiri Menzel), The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, I Served the King of England, and Too Loud a Solitude. He fell to his death from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital, apparently trying to feed the pigeons. |