Describe Books As The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4)
| Original Title: | Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války |
| ISBN: | 0140449914 (ISBN13: 9780140449914) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4 |
| Characters: | Josef Švejk, Palivec, Bretschneider, Staff Warder Slavík, Chaplain Otto Katz, Lieutenant Lukáš, Colonel Friedrich Kraus von Zillergut, Captain Sagner, Colonel Schröder, Jurajda, 2nd Lieutenant Dub, Quartermaster Sergeant-Major Vaněk, Volunteer Marek, Vodička, Cadet Biegler, Captain Tayrle, General Fink von Finkenstein, Chaplain Martinec, "Sergeant Teveles", Baloun |
| Setting: | Prague (Praha)(Czech Republic) |
| Literary Awards: | Kääntäjien valtionpalkinto (1992) |
Jaroslav Hašek
Paperback | Pages: 752 pages Rating: 4.11 | 14274 Users | 899 Reviews
List Of Books The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4)
| Title | : | The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4) |
| Author | : | Jaroslav Hašek |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 752 pages |
| Published | : | April 28th 2005 by Penguin Classics (first published 1923) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. European Literature. Czech Literature. Humor. War |
Relation Concering Books The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4)
In The Good Soldier Švejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hašek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war. Good-natured and garrulous, Švejk becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle. Cecil Parrott's vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.Rating Of Books The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4)
Ratings: 4.11 From 14274 Users | 899 ReviewsComment On Of Books The Good Soldier Švejk (Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války #1-4)
I bought this in 1980 as a treat for finishing my A levels. I was attracted by the garish bright yellow cover and the cartoonish character on the front. It took me into a new world, portraying the kaleidoscope of the Austo Hungarian empire through the lense of the only loyal Czech private in the whole army. Sadly Svejk is a hopeless idiot, and his part in the war is of no use to Franz Joseph.A rambling, irreverent, irreligious and bawdy mess of a book - the author wrote the book in installmentsI wanted to read this because I knew that Svejk was the forbear of one of the ur-texts of sad-eyed high school existentialists, namely, Catch-22. Joseph Heller said he could never have written his surreal epic without having read this WWI picaresque by Hasek. I thought I was going to love it, obviously. While perusing Svejk was interesting in a historical sense, unfortunately I ended up not finding it as enjoyable as I had hoped. Despite the many lavish descriptions of how to fight bureaucracy
"A monarchy as idiotic as this ought not to exist at all."And so the eponymous Josef Svejk summarizes this book in one sentence. This book is, above all, a parody of the Habsburg Empire during World War I--especially in regards to its bureaucracy and its nationalities policy. Scholars have been perplexed for years over whether Svejk really is an idiot, or if he fakes it with absolute success. Although the story is centered on Svejk himself, we readers--between all of the "Sir, I humbly report
Humbly report, Sir, but I've been reading this book called The Good Soldier Švejk which I had not planned to read as part of my World War I project, but there you have it. It's a satire of the stupidity of war, of governments and armies and regulations, of class struggles. Of being a Czech, and nevertheless in the Austrian army. To deal with the absurdity of it all, you need an anti-hero. Which would be this guy:Švejk. One buffoonerous episode...follows another...and another...Yes, the drawings
A vastly amusing, compulsive read, Hašek's masterpiece is, moreover, a brutal satire of humanity's foulest self-inflicted plagues - war, organized religion and a savagely oppressive State - that retains too this day its power to shock and disturb. As for Josef Švejk, perhaps no other Everyman or antihero was ever so endearing. An unforgettable book and one of the few classics (Rabelais also comes to mind) that can be consumed with such greedy, giddy delight.
Mine is a 1943 edition of this by Penguin Books. The pages are brittle so I wasn't able to dog-ear, but all the pages are intact. Sewn-up and not merely glued, only four pages were detached. As the war was ongoing then, its back cover advertises "Penguin Specials" with titles like: "Modern Battle," "American vs. Germans," "How Russia Prepared," "How the Jap Army Fights," "New Soldier's Handbook," "Aircraft Recognition," "New Ways of War," etc. Another recommended title is "Guerrilla Warfare"
Vanek asked with interest: "How long do you think the war will go on, Svejk?" "Fifteen years," answered Svejk. "That's obvious because once there was a Thirty Years War and now we're twice as clever as they were before, so it follows that thirty divided by two is fifteen"This is an unusually succinct quote from our good natured Good Soldier Svejk , who is normally given to interminable rambling anecdotes to illustrate his point (or sometimes seemingly just to pass the time), and it neatly sums
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.