Oddly brilliant. ( )

Fantastisch! ( )

A work of staggering genius, with a likewise genius translation courtesy of Paul Wilson, this book follows the life and misadventures of the diminutive waiter, Ditie, in the Czech Republic of the mid-twentieth century. I can't say too much without divulging the plot, but if like me you've been thirsting after novels that carry the same tone and atmosphere of those of Roberto Bolano, this will be just your cup of tea. ( )

A Czech farce set against the history of the mid 1900's. It mirrors life in that it's fairly silly and pointless in the beginning but much more serious and contemplative towards the end. ( )

Extraordinary. Quite simply one of the greatest things I have read in my life. The first-person narrative of a waiter in pre-WW2 Czechoslovakia, it begins in a predominately comic vein as it tells a coming of age story highlighted by an encounter with the Emperor of Ethiopia, then turns deadly serious as World War 2 starts and the Nazis take over his homeland--not to his detriment, however, as he has managed to captivate a beautiful German gym instructor whom he marries, with the permission of the Nazi party, in one of the book's most memorable juxtapositions of the ridiculous and the horrific. But it is the post-war section that truly seals the novel's greatness, as the waiter's financial success segues into a comic prison sequence that ends with his more or less banishment to the forest. The closing sequences, with his faithful animal friends, are about as good as writing can get. This book pretty much captures everything there is about life, about self-discovery, about happiness, about wealth, about friendship, about love--about all things--in its 241 pages. I feel privileged to have read it. In a house with hundreds of books I will never live long enough to even open, I'm happy my hands pulled this one out of the stack. ( )