I Served the King of England

von Bohumil Hrabal

256 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

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.

• Reihe: New Directions Classics
• Themen: Belletristik Action- / Abenteuerromane Kriegsromane und Militärabenteuer Zweiter Weltkrieg
• ISBN: 9780811216876
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.05.2007
• Größe: 202 x 167 mm
• Verlag: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Übersetzung: Paul Wilson