I Served the King of England

Bohumil Hrabal
1971
Rating: 8

In 1997, an 83 year old man who apparently was trying to feed some pigeons outside, fell from the fifth floor of a hospital in Prague and died. The man was Bohumil Hrabal, the Czech novelist and poet. I didn’t learn how he met his end until after I finished reading his novel, I Served the King of England, but when I read that about him on the back of that novel, it made sense that that’s how he would meet his end. The last phase of the novel’s protagonist’s life is spent taking care of four animals.

I believe it is at least as good, and most likely better than its most obvious comparator, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s a picaresque novel; frequently funny, but also moving, and is crammed with great writing and imagery. I hate to use the word sparkles, but the book sparkles.

In its opening phases the protagonist — I believe we only get his last name, Ditie, which is German, which is significant in the story — works as a busboy in a series of hotel restaurants. There was one point where for five pages, I wondered if I could get through an entire novel of him being a busboy in different hotel restaurants, but the novel proceeds to take some wild and unexpected turns.