Novel
The Good Soldier Švejk
Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka
Jaroslav Hašek · 1921
Opening lines
„Tak nám zabili Ferdinanda,“ řekla posluhovačka panu Švejkovi, který opustiv před léty vojenskou službu, když byl definitivně prohlášen vojenskou lékařskou komisí za blba, živil se prodejem psů, ošklivých nečistokrevných oblud, kterým padělal rodokmeny.
“So they've killed our Ferdinand,” said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who, having left military service years before after being definitively declared an idiot by an army medical board, made his living selling dogs, ugly mongrel monsters whose pedigrees he forged.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from cs.wikisource.org
Synopsis
At the start of the Great War, Josef Švejk, a Praguer once discharged for idiocy, declares himself ready to serve the emperor. Time and again at odds with the police, doctors, chaplains and officers, he carries out every order with such literal zeal that he throws everything in his path into disorder, even on the road to the front. No one knows whether he is an idiot or is pretending.
Context
For lack of a publisher, the author published the first instalment himself, thirty-two pages, with his friend František Sauer on 21 March 1921, and the two of them sold it even in the breweries of Prague; the first book appeared in volume form in July from Adolf Synek, who issued the rest until 1923. The author, who had planned six books, had completed three and begun the fourth at his death; the journalist Karel Vaněk finished it. Josef Lada's illustrations, made after the author's death, fixed the character's face; the character had appeared as early as 1912 in a short story collection.
Who it is for
A long novel in four books, the last unfinished, in the language of the ordinary man, between satire, farce and the grotesque. In French, Benoît Meunier's translation (2018) has replaced the one of 1932.
Prizes and reception
The most translated Czech novel, in more than fifty languages; the words švejkovina and švejkovat have passed into everyday language.