Volume 36, Number 8 · May 18, 1989
Czech Mates
By D.J. Enright
I Served the King of England
by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Paul Wilson
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 243 pp., $17.95
My First Loves
by Ivan Klíma, translated by Ewald Osers
Norton, 164 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Catapult: A Timetable of Rail, Sea, and Air Ways to Paradise
by Vladimír Páral, translated and with an introduction by William Harkins
Catbird Press/A Garrigue Book, 226 pp., $15.95
Sins for Father Knox
by Josef Skvorecky, translated by Kaca Polackova Henley
Norton, 268 pp., $17.95
Whereas George Orwell was down and out in Paris, Bohumil Hrabal's narrator and hero, Ditie by name, is upwardly mobile in the hotel and restaurant world of Prague. Ditie loves his labors. In some respects his experiences resemble those of Thomas Mann's Hochstapler Felix Krull, who did nicely for himself while working at the Hotel Saint James and Albany in Paris.
Review, 3933 words
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