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The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics) |
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The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics)
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by Jaroslav Hasek, Josef Lada, and Cecil Parrott
Sales Rank: 73738
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List Price: $16.00
$10.88
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 784 pages
Published by: Penguin Classics December 27, 2005
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0140449914
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0140449914
Book Dimensions:
7.6 x 5 x 1.4 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Description
In The Good Soldier Svejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hasek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.
Good-natured and garrulous, Svejk becomes the Austrian army’s most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I—although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle. Cecil Parrott’s vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.
“Brilliant . . . Perhaps the funniest novel ever written.”
—George Monbiot
From the Inside Flap
Introduction and translation by Cecil Parrott
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Good Soldier Svejk (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)
I first read Hasek's masterpiece almost thirty years ago in a shorter and more Bowdlerized translation. The Cecil Parrot edition is, needless to say, far preferable (it even contains a wonderful introduction including a discussion of Czech profanity as compared to that in English) and I've read it again and again since it came out in 1974. Shelby Foote said somewhere that every year he reads Proust as a sort of literary vacation. About ever 2 or 3 years I reread Svejk to cleanse my literary palate and it's always as fresh and as enjoyable as it was the first time. The dialogue, the characters and the situations in Svejk are, stated simply, the funniest I've ever read. Many other books have many merits in this regard, but none has approached Hasek in the sustained hilarity over 500 pages or more. The secret policeman, Bretschneider, Chaplain Katz, Sergeant Major Vanek, Cadet Biegler, Balloun and Lt. Dub are all memorable characters in their own right, but when they interact the result surpasses anything I have ever read for comedy. The episode involving a character with writer's block during his drafting of a prayer to be recited while administering Mr. Kokoska's pharmaceutical powders for cow flatulence is a classic rivalling Aristophanes or Rabelais. [I realize that sentence is confusingly prolix, so please read the book; it will be worth your while.] The term "laugh out loud" is overused and abused these days, but The Good Soldier Svejk will have you disturbing family and friends with repeated guffawing any time you are reading it nearby. I can't give a text any higher recommendation.
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The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics)
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Price: $10.88
Updated on 6-21-2008.
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