The Good Soldier Svejk: Introduction by Cecil Parrott (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) - Hardcover

Hasek, Jaroslav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679420363 ISBN 13: 9780679420361

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 1993

Synopsis

The eponymous hero of The Good Soldier Svejk-- the book for which the Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek will forever be remembered--has virtually come to define, since his creation in the aftermath of World War I, the spirit of comic endurance necessary to withstand the manglings of a modern-day bureaucratic war machine.

Shrewd, affable, possessed of an unerring talent for finding himself in (and extricating himself from) the most fitfully chaotic and absurd situations, Svejk represents, in his instinct for survival, all those human values which stand opposed to the utter futility of warfare.

With an introduction from, and translated by, Cecil Parrott.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

About this title

Review:

"Without Svejk, Joseph Heller has said, there would have been no Catch-22."--The Guardian

"One of the greatest works of 20th century literature."--Boston Globe

"Hasek was a comic genius."--Sunday Times (London)

"Rich and ranging, endlessly inventive. ... The predicaments of Svejk in an absurd world still continue. And the laughter echoes."--Los Angeles Times

"[Svejk] is one of the great characters of 20th-century literature. ... [Hasek] captures the flavor of life in early-century Prague. ... Hasek's honesty, clarity of detail, and pawky restraint have made The Good Soldier Svejk a near classic."--New Republic

"All the good adjectives apply to [this novel]: robust, bawdy, sly, hugely comic and astonishingly inventive; it is also singularly undemanding on its readers. ... A very funny novel and a wise one."--Newsweek

"Brilliant. ... Perhaps the funniest novel ever written."--George Monbiot

"Anyone in power, including the president would benefit from Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk. ... First because it would make them laugh, and then because it is the best antiwar novel I know."--Colm Toibin

"Continues to have an astonishing afterlife. ... Commonly cited as an ancestor of Joseph Heller's Catch-22... [its] continued resonance suggests how deep a nerve Hasek touched. His comic hero highlights the illogic of war so brilliantly that Svejk's character has been absorbed into Western culture."--New York Times

"[A] comic masterpiece."--Telegraph (UK)

About the Author:

Jaroslav Hasek (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, Hasek 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 Hasek launched into writing his devastating and hilarious satire The Good Soldier Svejk, which was tragically left unfinished at his premature death and yet was, by various measures, probably unfinishable.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679420363
• ISBN 13: 9780679420361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 864