'Our very best writer today' Milan Kundera

Ditie is a pint-sized hotel waiter with big dreams.

Between pocketing stolen change from unsuspecting customers and reminiscing on nights spent at the local brothel, he fantasises about his immense - and imagined - riches.

Then, ludicrously, Ditie’s dreams start to become reality.

Yet while his chaotic adventures lead him to ever more glamorous hotels, beyond the sparkling dining halls, the forces of twentieth-century European history march on.

A whirlwind of comic genius, a gut-punch of narrative power, this is the story of one small man’s rise and fall – or fall and rise – against the shadowy backdrop of Europe’s darkest days.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL

‘An extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel’
New York Times

‘Hrabal bounces and floats... with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail’
Julian Barnes

‘A joyful, picaresque story, which begins with Baron Munchausen-like adventures and ends in tears and solitude.’
James Wood

"The fantasising and storytelling deliver a body blow of total irreverence to the solemn mythopoeia of monumental historiography" - Times Literary Supplement

"Well worth reading" - The Book Magazine