Why a Booktrail?
1950s: A man has lived in a Czech police state for 35 years
Too Loud a Solitude
What you need to know before your trail
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 indestructibility- against censorship, political oppression etc – of the written word.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Discover the lost and forgotten world of Prague’s language and libraries
This book is set in and around the libraries of Prague and the cultural history of the country. The main character pulps books but he also saves many:
“I’m the only one on earth who knows that deep in the heart of each bale there’s a wide-open Faust or Don Carlos, that here, buried beneath a mound of blood-soaked cardboard, lies a Hyperion, there, cushioned on piles of cement bags rests a Thus Spake Zarathustra; I’m the only one on earth who knows which bale has Goethe, which Schiller, which Holderlin, which Nietzsche.”
The joy of reading:
“Because when I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Too Loud a Solitude
Destination: Prague Author/Guide: Bohumil Hrabal Departure Time: 1950s onwards
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
