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I’ve always loved historic house museums, loved peering beyond the velvet rope into a Victorian bedroom or a colonial kitchen and imagining the ghosts that wore those dresses, or worked the handle of that butter churn, or laid the fire in that grate... 

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Too Loud a Solitude

by Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Henry Heim
Too Loud a Solitude

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780156904582
ISBN10: 0156904586
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Hanta has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening he rescues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Hanta may be an idiot, as his boss calls him, but he is an idiot with a difference — the ability to quote the Talmud, Hegel, and Lao-tzu.

In this baroque and winsome tale, Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera has called "our very best writer today," celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word.

Review

"Hrabal's tale, so finely balanced between pathos and comedy, loses none of its power now that Czechoslovakia is free." Los Angeles Times

Review

"An irresistibly eccentric romp, quick with the heart's life." New York Times Book Review

Synopsis

Hantá rescues books from the jaws of his compacting press and carries them home. Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera calls “our very best writer today,” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word. Translated by Michael Henry Heim.

 


5 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (4 comments)

`
Peter Anderson , October 21, 2011 (view all comments by Peter Anderson)
Goodness, what a phenomenal little book this is. Powerful with so few words. Thoughtful, philosophical, touching, funny, and ultimately tragic. But though tragic, the conclusion makes perfect sense in light of the preceding narrative, and the narrator gains a fate which is greatly preferable to the unpalatable alternative that he otherwise faced. The book has shades of Knut Hamsun (the solitary, intellectual, reality-challenged narrator of Hunger), George Orwell (the stubborn permanence of the written word, a la 1984) and Franz Kafka (inhuman bureaucracies and the overall surreal tone), three writers whom I greatly admire, a list to which I now add Bohumil Hrabal. During my life I've only re-read a handful of books, but Too Loud a Solitude is one I will definitely be returning to, and probably more than once.

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juniper , January 01, 2011 (view all comments by juniper)
This slim novel comes from a bright mind. Nothing in it can be predicted. It is full of filth, shocks of beauty and enormous energy. It covers the entire range of human passions without judgment. It is mind-expanding and truly invents, in the most reserved and elite sense of that word. There is nothing comparable.

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venusinfauxfurz , May 05, 2007 (view all comments by venusinfauxfurz)
Simply a beautiful story. It grabs you on the first line and lets you down easily on the last.

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Ailana , January 04, 2007 (view all comments by Ailana)
Though brief, this is a powerful, compelling book. The details of the paper recycler's life and art are vivid and will remain with me. Hrabal focuses not only on books but also on the motivation and obsession of the worker/artist and society's response to them. The book is symbolic on so many levels.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780156904582
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
04/27/1992
Publisher:
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Series info:
Harvest in Translation
Pages:
112
Height:
.33IN
Width:
5.34IN
Thickness:
.50
Series:
Harvest in translation
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1992
Series Volume:
Nr. 4394
UPC Code:
2800156904584
Translator:
Michael Henry Heim
Author:
Bohumil Hrabal
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
General Fiction

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$7.50
List Price:$11.99
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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1Cedar Hills

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $11.99
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