Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age

This ebullient, gallivanting novella encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic''s best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal''s cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties with his tale. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.

About the author

Bohumil Hrabal was born in 1914 in Brno-Zidenice, Moravia. He received a degree in Law from Prague's Charles University, and lived in Prague since the late 1940s. In the 1950s he worked as a manual laborer in the Kladno ironworks, from which he drew inspiration for his "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at that time. He won international acclaim for such books as I Served the King of England and Too Loud a Solitude. Hrabal is considered, along with Jaroslav Hasek and Karel Capek, as one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century, and perhaps the most important in the post-war period. In February 1997 he flew out of his hospital window never to return.

Product details

• Authors: Bohumil Hrabal, Hrabal Bohumil
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Release: 02.07.2026
• EAN: 9781529986105
• ISBN: 978-1-5299-8610-5
• No. of pages: 176
• Series: Brief Encounters
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Humorous / General, FICTION / Literary, Fiction in translation, Humorous fiction, c 1960 to c 1969, Czechoslovakia, FICTION / World Literature / Czech Republic, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: love / relationships