From the back cover of the New Directions edition: First published in 1971 as a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I served the King of England is a comic novel telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before […]
Tag: I Served the King of England
A Christmas Eve entry in the series of excerpts from Bohumil Hrabal’s fantastic tale, where the unbelievable routinely comes true. At times the plot feels like a rickety framework on which to hang anecdotes such as the following…not that I’m complaining. While in the prison for millionaires (more on this in the next post), Ditie […]
Bohumil Hrabal’s fantastic tale takes a dark turn as World War II begins. Ditie loses his job in Prague when he falls in love with a German. Even as Hrabal describes an absurd setting, an ugly edge creeps in with his humor. I’m providing another long excerpt to give an idea of his blending the […]
I wanted to pass on this extended quote from Bohumil Hrabal’s I Served the King of England because it captures the element of his comic madness. Ditie, a (short in stature) waiter-in-training at the Golden Prague Hotel and Restaurant, asks a traveling salesman representing a tailoring firm from Padubice why he cuts strips of parchment […]