Harlequin´s Millions - A Novel – Hrabal Bohumil

Called Czechoslovakia’s greatest contemporary writer by Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal presents a novel now available in English for the first time, populated by eccentric and unforgettable residents of a home for the elderly who reminisce about their lives and their changing country. With a keen eye for the absurd and dialogue that captures the poignancy of everyday life, the novel enters the mind of an elderly woman coming to terms with the passing of time. Reviews of Hrabal’s work describe Too Loud a Solitude as short, sharp, eccentric, sophisticated, thought-provoking and pithy, while The Guardian praises its combination of comedy, seriousness, pathos, slapstick, sex and violence. The Independent calls it tender and scatological, playful and sombre, moving and irresistibly funny. I Served the King of England is described as a joyful picaresque story that begins with Baron Munchausen-like adventures and ends in tears and solitude, as well as a comic, inventive, charming, wise and sad novel. The New York Times calls it extraordinary and subtly tragicomic, while Dancing Lessons unfolds as a single, sometimes maddening sentence that carries the reader forward with remarkable intensity.