受傷的牛隻、孱弱的小羊，還有一車車坦克與炸藥，都在列車上。他決定，這次他一定要做點什麼事才行……
鄰近布拉格的這個小鎮，向來不太惹人注意。鎮上的人，似乎也沒受到戰爭影響，依然安安靜靜過日子。天上掉下來一架戰鬥機，他們可以在五分鐘內把殘骸清空，各自帶回戰利品，然後發揮想像力，把廢鐵變成令人吃驚的生活用品。能夠佔據他們心思的事情，反而是鐵路實習生米洛什的爺爺想要用催眠術抵禦德國坦克那樣的愚蠢行徑，或者像火車調度員胡比奇卡在女發報員身上蓋戳印這類的浪漫誹聞。
實習生米洛什好不容易有了女朋友，在重要的那一夜竟然發現自己有嚴重的問題……萬念俱灰之下，他想結束自己的性命，不過老天不從他所願。休養三個月之後他回到工作崗位，他又想起那如唐吉訶德般勇敢的爺爺。所以，當帝國軍列車依舊匆匆穿越車站，他看到上面載滿受傷的牛隻、孱弱的小羊，還有一車車坦克與炸藥，他決定，這次他一定要做點什麼事才行……
小鎮的人文風光在赫拉巴爾輕靈的筆下躍然紙上，在紛亂動盪的世局下，小小的凡人終究會反應出一套屬於自己的生存方式，其中或許有些無奈，卻是人生最真實的寫照。赫拉巴爾每一篇故事中的主角，平凡無奇地像佈滿斑點、毫不起眼的葡萄串梗子，可是，在這根梗子上串起了一顆顆晶瑩剔透、酸中帶甜的葡萄，就如同環繞主角周圍那一群也許無名無姓卻生鮮活蹦的人們，織就這一讓人讀著發酸，卻同時會笑出眼淚的精采故事。

From the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers.

擅長描寫普通、被拋棄在「時代垃圾堆上的人」的Bohumil Hrabal在本書中敘述著一個懷有無窮夢想的小人物的故事。一個餐廳服務員，一心想成為「伺候過英國國王」的領班那樣的人物。他辛勤工作卻不時遭到不公的貶抑與誣衊。直到有天他終於如願以償了，諷刺的是，這個願望竟然是在拘留所裡實現的……本書勾勒出捷克在大戰前後底層的人生百態。對於大時代容易熱血沸騰的讀者來說，本書則滿是卑微而平靜的存在。
敏感的小個子餐廳服務員，一心想成為「伺候過英國國王」的領班那樣的人物。他孜孜矻矻地辛勤工作，儘管已經掙了多得能蓋住整個地板的錢，卻仍不時遭到不公的貶抑與誣衊。他想盡辦法要與別人比個高低，夢想自己成為百萬富翁，好讓別人對他另眼相看。後來他終於如願以償了，然而諷刺的是，這個願望竟然是在拘留所裡實現的……作者從一個不起眼的餐廳服務員的眼光，審視納粹法西斯罕為人知的人種培育中心、傷員療養院等。沒有激越的情緒或有誇張的語言，全書以平靜溫和的語調，緩緩訴說著大時代底下小人物的悲喜，卻仍能感受到撼人的戲劇張力。赫拉巴爾向來擅於描繪市井小民的生活，本書除了保有此特色外，作者也有別於過往常用的的手法，而以流暢的說書形式鋪陳情節，呈現捷克斯洛伐克半世紀的社會生活。
本書是赫拉巴爾在十八天內，處於「一種輕盈的無意識狀態」下完成。從書寫完畢到出版，他隻字未動，因為「不管是《國王》，還是《孤獨》，都好比一輛客車在白天漸漸開進一條極其漫長的隧道，開進一個漆黑的夜幕中。」書畢二十年後才得以出版，但民間早已廣為抄寫、傳閱。

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Hant'a - 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 perpetuator.
But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship.
This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructability- against censorship, political opression etc - of the written word.

For gauche young apprentice Milos Hrma, life at the small but strategic railway station in Bohemia in 1945 is full of complex preoccupations. There is the exacting business of dispatching German troop trains to and from the toppling Eastern front; the problem of ridding himself of his burdensome innocence; and the awesome scandal of Dispatcher Hubicka's gross misuse of the station's official stamps upon the telegraphist's anatomy. Beside these, Milos's part in the plan for the ammunition train seems a simple affair. CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS, which became the award-winning Jiri Menzel film of the 'Prague Spring', is a classic of postwar literature, a small masterpiece of humour, humanity and heroism which fully justifies Hrabal's reputation as one of the best Czech writers of today.

Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most popular works. Milos Hrma is a timid railroad apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. After receiving acclaim as a novel, Closely Watched Trains was made into a successful film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 1967.

Hantá rescues books from the jaws of his compacting press and carries them home. Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera calls “our very best writer today,” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word. Translated by Michael Henry Heim.

Never before published in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950s and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where “humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.”

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Hant'a - 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.<br /><br />But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship.<br /><br />This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructability- against censorship, political opression etc - of the written word.

In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal bought a cottage in Kersko, about an hour’s drive east of Prague. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his time between Prague and Kersko, where he wrote and tended to a community of feral cats. Over the years, his relationship to cats grew deeper and more complex, becoming a measure of the pressures, both private and public, that impinged on his life as a writer.<br /><br /><br /><br />Despite the tender love he feels for the cats, especially his favorites who share his bed, there are moments of intense violence—as he controls the feline population explosion explosively.<br /><br /><br /><br /><em>All My Cats</em>, written in 1983 after a serious car accident, is best seen as a confessional memoir, the chronicle of an author who becomes overwhelmed by his cats and his life, and is driven to the brink of madness by the dilemmas his indulgent love for the animals have created. In the end, <em>All My Cats</em> becomes a book about Hrabal’s relationship to nature, about the unlikely sources of redemption that come to him unbidden, like a gift from the cosmos—and about love.

هانتا کارگری است که کارش خمیر کردن کتاب، دسته گل و آثار نقاشی است. او کتابهای نفیس را با خودش به خانه می‌برد. همه جای خانه، محل کار و مغز او پر از کتاب است. هر روز کاغذهای باطله را با دستگاه پرس، فشرده می‌کند و بسته‌های کاغذی می‌سازد، در دل هر بسته، کتاب گشوده ارزشمندی می‌گذارد، یک فاوست، یک دُن کارلوس، یک چنین گفت زرتشت و سپس باسمه‌های نقاشی را دور تا دور بسته‌ها می‌بندد. در کارش هنرمندی است! اما این چیزی نیست که رئیس کارگاه از او انتظار دارد. رئیس فقط می‌خواهد کاغذهای باطله هر چه سریعتر بسته‌بندی شوند.