{"product_id":"9781784871178-retail-mr-kafka","title":"Mr Kafka","description":"\u003cp\u003eNewly discovered stories by the greatest Czech writer of the twentieth century\n\nEnter the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague, the steelworks run by singed men, the covered market that smells of new-born babes, the cacophonous open-air dance hall. Mr Kafka is avoiding his landlady's blueberry wine breath, a stonemason witnesses the destruction of a monument to Stalin he risked his life to build, and factory men strain to catch a glimpse of a beautiful bathing murderess. In these newly discovered stories, Hrabal captures men and women in an eerily beautiful nightmare and their spirit in all its misery and splendour.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBohumil Hrabal was born in 1914 in Brno-Zidenice, Moravia. He received a degree in Law from Prague's Charles University, and lived in Prague since the late 1940s. In the 1950s he worked as a manual laborer in the Kladno ironworks, from which he drew inspiration for his \"hyper-realist\" texts he was writing at that time. He won international acclaim for such books as I Served the King of England and Too Loud a Solitude. Hrabal is considered, along with Jaroslav Hasek and Karel Capek, as one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century, and perhaps the most important in the post-war period. In February 1997 he flew out of his hospital window never to return.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Book Grocer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46659167125723,"sku":"9781784871178-RETAIL","price":25.49,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/b3381611a5bf407f8b44754da43edb92.png?v=1743581679","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9781784871178-retail-mr-kafka","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}