The Good Soldier Svejk

---

Beschreibung:

The inspiration for such works as Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Jaroslav Ha*ek's black satire The Good Soldier *vejk is translated with an introduction by Cecil Parrott in Penguin Classics.

Good-natured and garrulous, *vejk becomes the Austro-Hungarian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of the First World War - although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards, getting drunk and becoming a general nuisance, the resourceful *vejk uses all his natural cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the doctors, police, clergy and officers who chivvy him towards battle. The story of a 'little man' caught in a vast bureaucratic machine, The Good Soldier *vejk combines dazzling wordplay and piercing satire to create a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.

Cecil Parrott's vibrant, unabridged and unbowdlerized translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Ha*ek's turbulent life as an anarchist, communist and vagranty, and the Everyman character of *vejk. This edition also includes a guide to Czech names, maps and original illustrations by Josef Ladas.

Jaroslav Ha*ek (1883-1923) Besides this book, the writer wrote more than 2,000 short works, short stories, glosses, sketches, mostly under various pen-names.

If you enjoyed The Good Soldier *vejk, you might like Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, also available in Penguin Classics.

'Brilliant ... perhaps the funniest novel ever written'
George Monbiot

'Ha*ek was a comic genius'
Sunday Times

'Ha*ek was a humorist of the highest calibre....
A later age will perhaps put him on a level with Cervantes and Rabelais'
Max Brod

---

Über die Urheberinnen:

Jaroslav Ha*ek (Author)
Jaroslav Ha*ek (1883-1923) wrote more than 2,000 short works, short stories, glosses, sketches, mostly under various pen-names. A prankster and stalwart of innumerable taverns scattered across Bohemia, Ha*ek was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War and spent much of the war in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. After the war Ha*ek launched into writing his devastating and hilarious satire The Good Soldier *vejk, which was tragically left unfinished at his premature death and yet was, by various measures, probably unfinishable.

---

Produktdetails:

• Autor:in: Jaroslav Hasek
• Illustrator:in: Josef Lada
• Übersetzer:in: Cecil Parrott
• Erscheinungsdatum: 28.04.2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• Seitenumfang: 784 Seiten
• ISBN: 9780140449914