Too Loud a Solitude

Bohumil Hrabal · 1914–1997 · Czechia

Originally Příliš Hlučná Samota (Czech) · translated by Michael Henry Heim

Why it matters

For thirty-five years Haňťa has compacted banned books, rescuing the best and drinking the rest: a hymn to reading by the man who pulps it. A hundred pages of beer-soaked, heartbreaking Prague sublime.

At a glance

Long, breathless, unpunctuated-feeling sentences in a compressed, allusion-dense monologue.