Too Loud a Solitude

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of 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 ...

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of 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 indestructability- against censorship, political opression etc - of the written word.

Bohumil Hrabal was born in 1914 in Brno-Zidenice, Czecholovakia. He died in 1995.