Description
‘Our very best writer today’ Milan Kundera
Ditie is a pint-sized hotel waiter with big dreams.
Between pocketing stolen change from unsuspecting customers and reminiscing on nights spent at the local brothel, he fantasises about his immense – and imagined – riches.
Then, ludicrously, Ditie’s dreams start to become reality.
Yet while his chaotic adventures lead him to ever more glamorous hotels, beyond the sparkling dining halls, the forces of twentieth-century European history march on.
A whirlwind of comic genius, a gut-punch of narrative power, this is the story of one small man’s rise and fall – or fall and rise – against the shadowy backdrop of Europe’s darkest days.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL
‘An extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel’
New York Times
‘Hrabal bounces and floats… with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail’
Julian Barnes
‘A joyful, picaresque story, which begins with Baron Munchausen-like adventures and ends in tears and solitude.’
James Wood