Random Recommendation Guest Post: I Served The King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

This recommendation comes from Jake Burnett. You can follow him on twitter @Quibblemuch and on his website Quibblemuch's Impractical Miscellany

 I Served the King of England (1983) by Bohumil Hrabal (transl. Paul Wilson)

A wonderful, sad, wistful, comic, sweet novel about a busboy in a Prague hotel in the middle of the 20th century. Hrabal is incredible, and this is one of the best introductions to his work I can think of. This novel captures an acceptance of the sadness and tragedy underlying life (especially during the darkness of the last century), yet treats that sadness with a softly comic sensibility. Hrabal is high on my list of writers whom I wish I had had the privilege to know.