Too Loud a Solitude

Hanta has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening he resues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Hanta may be an idiot, as his boss calls him, but he is an idiot with a difference - the ability to quote the Talmud, Hegel, and Lao-tzu. In this baroque and winsome tale, Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera has called "our very best writer today, " celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word.

About the author

Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) was a Czechoslovakian writer. He was the author of Closely Watched Trains, which gained an international audience both as a novel and as a film, and I Served the King of England.

Summary

A short novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, called "our very best writer today" by Milan Kundera, this eccentric romp celebrates the indestructability––against censorship and political oppression––of the written word.

Too Loud a Solitude is a tender and funny story of Hanta––a man who has lived in a Czech police state––for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from jaws of hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetrator.

But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do––go down with his ship.

Translated by Michael Henry Heim.

Product details

• Authors: Bohumil Hrabal
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.04.1992
• EAN: 9780156904582
• ISBN: 978-0-15-690458-2
• No. of pages: 112
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 203 mm x 7 mm
• Weight: 100 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION: Literary, FICTION: Women, FICTION: Family Life / General, FICTION: Short Stories (single author), LITERARY COLLECTIONS: American / General, FICTION: Sea Stories, LITERARY COLLECTIONS: Women Authors, FICTION: Satire, FICTION: Feminist, FICTION: Humorous / Black Humor, LITERATURE: LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION, FICTION: World Literature / American / General