The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Hasek, Jaroslav

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140449914 ISBN 13: 9780140449914

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2005

Synopsis

Jaroslav Hašek's black satire, the inspiration for such works as Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Good-natured and garrulous, Švejk becomes the Austro-Hungarian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of the First World War - although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards, getting drunk and becoming a general nuisance, the resourceful Švejk uses all his natural cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the doctors, police, clergy and officers who chivvy him towards battle. The story of a 'little man' caught in a vast bureaucratic machine, The Good Soldier Švejk combines dazzling wordplay and piercing satire to create a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war. Cecil Parrott's vibrant, unabridged and unbowdlerized translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Hašek's turbulent life as an anarchist, communist and vagranty, and the Everyman character of Švejk. This edition also includes a guide to Czech names, maps and original illustrations by Josef Ladas.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The eponymous hero of The Good Soldier Svjek-the book for which the Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek will forever be remembered-has virtually come to define, since his creation in the aftermath of World War I, the spirit of comic endurance necessary to withstand the manglings of a modern-day bureaucratic war machine. Shrewd, affable, possessed of an unerring talent for finding himself in (and extricating himself from) the most fitfully chaotic and absurd situations, Svejk represents, in his instinct for survival, all those human values which stand opposed to the utter futility of warfare.

From the Inside Flap

Introduction and translation by Cecil Parrott

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0140449914
• ISBN 13: 9780140449914
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 784
• Illustrator: Lada Josef