I Served the King of England

First published and distributed secretly during the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, this tragicomic novel by Bohumil Hrabal is a first-person account by Ditie, a teenage busboy at a rural hotel who progresses to waiter, and eventually to successful hotel owner before his fall when the communists take over. The picaresque plot serves as the framework for a series of often hilarious stories about the people Ditie works with, the lives they have led, the values they maintain, their hopes for the future, and the sometimes large chasm between their dreams and reality. Set in rural hotels, in German camps during their occupation of Czechoslovakia, and in Prague, where Ditie served, not the King of England, but Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, the novel concludes at the "end of the road," where Ditie resides with his horse, goat, and cat, living on his memories and writing his autobiography--this book. Ditie is a charming story-teller, using the casual, almost innocent language of a young boy at the beginning and becoming philosophical and contemplative by the end. Hrabal's sensitivity to small details and his accurate depiction of real people responding to real situations in sometimes odd and often darkly humorous ways make this sometimes satiric novel a delight to read. Ribald and rowdy in his descriptions of his own sexual awakening and in the stories of his customers' peccadillos, Ditie maintains his dignity when he describes the important people with whom he comes into contact--the headwaiter who "served the King of England," the President of Czechoslovakia, and eventually Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, for whom Ditie is personal waiter. The novel takes a new, darker turn, when Ditie marries a German woman and leaves Prague to live in the mountains--at a breeding station the Germans have established to develop a "refined race of humans." Lise, his wife, travels widely for the Reich, once returning from Warsaw with a suitcase full of valuable stamps, confiscated from Jews, which guarantee their financial future. Their lives are less secure, however, and Ditie eventually dissociates himself from the Germans and tries to re-establish a life of his own, this time as the owner of a Czech hotel built with the proceeds from the sale of the stamps. By turns hilarious and poignant, satiric and sensitive, the novel depicts many aspects of Czech society and culture, but it is, above all, the story of Ditie, in many ways a Czech everyman. With symbolism throughout, and a repeating character, Zdenek, the headwaiter who "served the King of England," who appears at every crossroads in Ditie's life, the novel is more than a comic romp. A record of a time, place, and culture, it is also Ditie's meditation on his life and his role, if any, in the wider world. Soon to be released as a major film by Academy Award-winning Czech director Jiri Menzel, who also directed the film version of Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains, this novel deserves t

This is a fantastic novel - both literally and in the colloquial sense of that word when it is used as a hyperbolic form of praise; in this instance the praise is merited. Originally published in Czech in 1971, I Served the King of England certainly qualifies Hrabal to be considered as eminent a practitioner of "magic realism" as Gabriel Garcia Marquez or, for that matter, the Gunter Grass of The Tin Drum. If this places the author in elevated literary company, he has earned his place there. The story begins as a picaresque autobiography of the narrator, the runt "Ditie" who recounts his adventures as a busboy and waiter in Prague and elsewhere. Amazing and awe-inspiring things happen throughout the young man's career, often involving unlikely candidates (waiters, hotel owners, traveling salesmen) for the performance of outrageous or admirable deeds. Ditie is always game for adventures, especially of an erotic nature, and his lavish descriptions of the anatomy and enthusiastic love-making of his favorite prostitutes and other girlfriends is sensually arousing while touching and humorous at the same time (an erection with a heart of gold, wreathed in flowers. as it were.) The story takes a grimmer turn when he falls in love with Lise, a Bohemian German gym-instructor who is even more diminutive than he is. He becomes her knight-errant in a situation of deteriorating relationships between Czechs and Germans as the war approaches, and in his haste to defend his lady-love's honor he turns away from his countrymen in their time of need and oppression, a decision which eventually comes to haunt and discomfit him. This leads to their marriage and his subsequent odd career as a despised waiter at a Nazi "Lebensborn" resort for young women programmatically impregnated by warrior-studs. To the music of Wagner and under the banner of duty to produce a specimen of the Teutonic New Man, he and his wife conceive a stunted, retarded child. At the war's end his wife wends her way heavenward (hellward? Or perhaps just into the ground) courtesy of an Allied bomb, and Ditie has the chance to return to his beloved venue of hotel-and-restaurant in Prague. He is not received warmly by his old colleagues, but manages to create a unique hotel in an abandoned foundry on the grounds of a quarry, using as his capital a fortune Lise looted from Polish Jews during her war service. With his stained wealth and an uneasy conscience he creates a sort of dreamy hotelier's paradise, which is soon doomed to destruction by the new political regime. There is a hilarious interlude at a newly established Communist Party "prison/reform camp" for millionaires, where the prisoners and their guards (all former miners who miss their old job) become interchangeable and totally confused about what is expected from whom - it's a wonderful parody of Lenin's who-whom rhetorical question. Throughout these adventures Ditie has been driven by the desire to become a very rich man

The story of the young apprentice, then waiter going from hotel to hotel, then owner of his own hotel and millionaire, then losing everything, explores with the typical Hrabal's humour, full of tenderness, the physical and psychological development of the boy, his memories through the first Republic of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then through the occupation of Bohemia by the Third Reich and the II World War until the final Communist take over. The lad, who at the beginning is a sort of parvenu, lusting for money and social recognition, suffers a progressive transformation of his soul which leads him to complete maturity, as he finally understands that wisdom lies in the heart of the humble, and that everything else is meaningless.

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.

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 actu