I Served the King of England [Hardcover]

Bohumil Hrabal (Author), Paul Wilson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1989

Ditie, a waiter, loves money, because he is short and money makes him feel six feet tall. So he follows his star from adventure to adventure, until he becomes a millionaire. But it is no dream come true, because along the way he troubles his conscience and ends up seeking a different kind of wealth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written in the form of a memoir, this playful social satire follows the rise and fall of a diminutive Czech waiter while mirroring the political turmoil of recent Czech history. Gleefully chronicling the grossness and corruption of the 1920s, Hrabal makes Ditie's early life delightful reading. The mood turns abruptly sour when Ditie falls in love with a German gym teacher in the '30s and becomes equally enamoured of her Nazi ideaology. After the war, Ditie is sentenced to prison as a collaborator; then becomes a hotelier with profits made from selling rare stamps stolen from Jewish concentration camp victims. He hopes to curry favor with his former employers, but they disdainfully ignore him. By the end of the book, with the coming of communism, Ditie has lost everything; he is banished to the former Sudetenland, with only some farm animals as company. The book begins brilliantly, but Hrabal's depiction of post-WW II Czechoslovakia is unrealistically rosy, and Ditie's moral transformation is not entirely persuasive. But the novel is always witty, often wise, and sparkles in Wilson's beautiful translation.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Sparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, this excellently translated novel by a major Czech writer brings into sharp focus the grotesque absurdities of recent Czech history. Dittie, a busboy with an inferiority complex and a driving ambition to become a millionaire, quickly rises to become a head waiter, but the respect he craves continues to allude him. When he marries a Nazi gym teacher, the Czechs despise him even more, while the Germans barely tolerate him. Rare stamps taken from wealthy Jews make his dream come true after the war, but his first-class hotel is soon nationalized by the Communists and he ends his life in poverty and isolation writing his memoirs. As is typical of Hrabal's work (e.g., Closely Watched Trains , LJ 2/1/69), the novel is full of zany characters whose antics range from supremely entertaining to bizarrely tragic. Highly recommended.
- Marie Bednar, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., University Park
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 243 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; First edition. edition (March 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015145745X
• ISBN-13: 978-0151457458
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #991,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of a Little Man, July 3, 2004

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Served the King of England (Paperback)

Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England is a beautiful, sparse, simply told story about a little man named Ditie. Ditie is a little man in the sense that he is small in stature. He is also little in the sense that he is merely a waiter, a little man who wanders blithely through the critical historical events that buffeted Czechoslovakia between 1935 and 1950 or so.

As the novel opens Ditie is a busboy at the Golden Prague Hotel. On his first day the hotel manager pulls him by the left ear to advise him to "remember, you don't see anything and you don't hear anything." The manager then pulls him by the right ear and tells him that he has "to see everything and hear everything." Ditie manages to learn how to accomplish this seemingly irreconcilable task.

Ditie is an ambitious man whose ambitions focus on acquiring two things: money and 'sensuous' experiences. His life is otherwise void of conscious thought or awareness. In many respects Hrabal portrays him vividly as something less than a complete human being. He earns money on the side selling frankfurters at the local train station. He gains extra tips from passengers ordering frankfurters from the train by fumbling for change long enough for the train to pull out. He decides to become a millionaire after walking into a room to see a portly Czech salesman rolling around on a floor covered with money. Ditie's hunger for sensual experiences is fueled after his first visit to the local brothel, the aptly named Paradise. After his first visit Ditie vows to make so much money that he can continue to explore the delights found there. Hrabal's description of Ditie's introduction to the lure of money and flesh is both comic and delightful.

Ditie leaves the Golden Prague Hotel and makes his way to the Hotel Tichota and then the Hotel Paris where he is promoted to waiter. It is there that he is taken under the wing of the headwaiter Mr. Skrivanek, who knows everything there is to know about being a top waiter. Whenever Ditie asks Skrivanek how he knows a particular fact Skrivanek replies - "because I served the King of England" at a banquet many years ago. Ditie later reaches one of his life's highpoints when he gets to serve the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. He then gets to answer "I served the Emperor of Ethiopia" whenever a younger waiter asks him for advice. The description of the banquet is another wonderful example of Hrabal's story telling ability.

It is while at the Hotel Paris that Ditie meets and falls in love with a young Sudeten German named Lise. As noted, Ditie is unaware or unfazed by the political events that are in the front of everyone else's mind. He is shocked that his fellow waiters ostracize him because of his relationship with Lise merely because of the troubles in the Sudetenland and the pending German invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ditie merely wants to become a millionaire and make love to Lise. Ditie is fired shortly before the German invasion.

The story takes us through Ditie's life during the war and up through the Communist accession to power in Czechoslovakia. At every step of the way these events swirl around Ditie without seeming to touch him in any real way. He spends a six month term in jail after the war for his collaboration with the Germans but that does not interfere with his plans to open up a spectacular hotel and become a millionaire. Ditie accomplishes this goal just around the time of the Communist accession to power in Czechoslovakia. Again, this does not seem to have any real impact on Ditie at all. In fact, when it is announced that the new regime will impose a horrendous tax on all millionaires Ditie eagerly awaits the validation that paying this tax will accord him. Instead he is horrified when an old colleague, a member of the Czech resistance who later becomes a party leader, whose life Ditie inadvertently saved from the Gestapo manages to obtain a tax exemption for Ditie. Horrified, Ditie marches to the local police with his bankbook to prove he is a millionaire. Of course all his assets are taken and he is sent to a work camp in the mountains.

It is only after Ditie has lost everything that he achieves some sense of his own humanity. It is a redemption that Ditie probably never knew he needed. As the story ends, Ditie wants nothing more than to be buried on the very top of a particular hill so that part of his remains make their way into some streams in Bohemia and the other part make their way into the Danube.

Although it is certainly easy to set out the events in I Served the King of England it is hard to convey the beauty and the comedy of Hrabal's writing. Hrabal's writing style is something of an anecdotal, stream of consciousness storytelling. It reminds me of the times I would sit in a bar, pub, or caf? in some far away place and come across someone who simply knew how to tell great stories. They might be a tad drunk, they might have told those stories to anyone willing to buy them a pint or too. But they are fun to listen to and sometimes they tell you a little bit about the storyteller and a little about yourself. Hrabal's I Served the King of England is one of those stories.

It is a delightful book.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essential Czech novel, June 26, 2001

By 

"the_drone" - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Served the King of England (Paperback)

I don't like words like 'masterpiece,' but there are books that I consider essential reading, books that allow you to connect to and unscramble the meaning of our troubled century. Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England is one of those books and, in my humble opinion, it must be one of the great comic novels of the 20th century, along with The Good Soldier Schweik, The Tin Drum, The Master and Margarita and The Autumm of the Patriarch. It is like those comic novels, about the role of individuals in history, and like those novels, it sheds light on the meaning of life. Unlike those novels however, I Served the King of England has an almost minimalist plot, propelled by the ambition of the main character to become a millionaire. Hrabal does not uses modernist narrative techniques at all; instead his novel develops in a linear fashion as his main character moves from hotel to hotel as a waiter, furthering his ambition and learning from his bosses the art of running a hotel. In the process, the character even joins the nazis (and marries one), becomes a millionaire after the war and looses everything under communist rule. His adventures as a waiter in the hotels are told through a comic, highly visual style that reminded me of Chaplin's films, a feeling later confirmed by Hrabal himself when he compares the adventures of incarcerated millionaires during communism as the height of chaplinesque humor. Somewhere during the middle of the novel I became a little exasperated by the apparent lack of sophistication in the narrative, but the novel only 'appears' to be superficial. There is a big emotional and intellectual pay-off at the end, as the main character comes to terms with history and the value of his connection to humanity. As a reader, I felt privileged to have taken the journey this bawdy and wonderful novel put me through.

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WITTY, CHARMING AND INHERENTLY CZECH, January 17, 2001

By 

EriKa "E" (Iceland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Served the King of England (Paperback)

Sitting in a café in Prague with several Australians (who happened to be a part of a miserable bus tour of Europe I subjected myself to) and our Czech tour guide, who, out of the kindness of our heart, led us to an off-the-beaten path place where tourists were not as prevalent as in the rest of Prague, we discussed Czech literature, where he (I believe his name was Kaspar) definitively announced that Czech president Vaclav Havel is a miserably bad writer, Milan Kundera is brilliant but overrated nevertheless, and Americans are the most annoying people in the world because we call virtually complete strangers "friends" having only spoken with them for a matter of ten minutes, maybe about something as inane as weather. I asked him, "What is good to read then?" Which is when he told us about Bohumil Hrabal, and the most brilliant book he (Kaspar) had ever read, I Served the King of England. He tried to describe it, but found it impossible because it was too filled with highly nuanced and some very uniquely Czech things. He recommended it, although he qualified his recommendations with many disclaimers: I won't really understand its meaning and depth because I am American. No one but a Czech can understand the significance of this work. Also, while he was at it, he had to let me know that it is impossible as a foreigner to try to learn the Czech language because it is impossible. Expats try it all the time, he assured me, but it is impossible. No, Kaspar impatiently but proudly insists, it does not matter if you have a background in Slavic languages, Czech is unique and only Czechs will truly master it.

Be that as it may, I found a copy of I Served... in a bookshop in Iceland after the bus tour was over. There were not any English language copies to be found in Prague (then again, I only had a few days to check, and I was too busy having a whirlwind two-day affair with a man from Spain who spoke nary a word of English). Be sure, of course, that I would not be so presumptuous as to purchase a copy of this magnificent treasure of modern Czech literature in its native language because it is a language which would naturally only confound me. I am American, after all. I barely know English!

With this glowing recommendation and pile of books I procured for late night reading on a friend's floor (my makeshift bed) in Reykjavik, I read I Served the King of England in one night, and I loved it. It was, as Kaspar promised, a brilliant book. I loved the irreverent and direct style of Hrabal's writing. I suspect that you will too. It is not a book filled with intricacies nor plots and subplots and it is not clogged with millions of characters. It is a simple book, but in its simplicity transcends the need for a lot of extra "stuff". (There is that expected American eloquence again!) I can say that at the end of the book, the narrator is almost like a hermit, living with his dog. If I am not mistaken (it has been almost 2 years since I read the book) the dog actually goes out and gets supplies for the narrator. Eventually the townspeople miss the narrator so much that they go to extraordinary lengths to make him come out of hiding, even (sadly!) killing the narrator's beloved and necessary dog. Definitely read this book if you can find it.