[xtrslots]

I finished this a few weeks ago. I didn't quite know what to make of it: whimsy with a strong dose of nastiness thrown in. Maybe that was the point, that in Czechoslovakia darkness always threatened any flicker of light. It's a weird and sometimes funny and sometimes vicious little book that I wouldn't recommend to anyone, really, but was certainly not without merit. I liked closing chapters in the prison camp and finally, movingly even, in isolation in the mountains. Before reading this I'd only known Hrabal as the screenwriter of two Jiri Menzel movies (two of the best movies of the Czech New Wave, or anywhere for that matter in the 1960s): Closely Watched Trains and Larks on a String. These movies both have darkness rippling beneath them - the latter is set in a prison camp - but it's never too explicit. I Served the King of England sees the author at times becoming overwhelmed by despair.