Jaroslav Hasek - The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War (Heinemman, 1973). Translated by Cecil Parrott. First published in Czech in 1923.

New scan. Searchable pdf (clearscan) with contents in bookmarks, accurate pagination and metadata, etc.


Classic Czech novel about military insanity; supposedly a major inspiration for Catch-22. This translation is the one currently available as a Penguin paperback. There is an older translation by Paul Selver, but it seems to be widely regarded as inadequate, though it remains in print and can be found on other download sites. (There is also a third, more recent translation, published in 1997, by Zdenek Sadlon and Emmit Joyce, but I don't have it.)


description:

In The Good Soldier Svejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hasek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.

Good-natured and garrulous, Svejk becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I—although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle. Cecil Parrott's vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.


“Brilliant . . . Perhaps the funniest novel ever written.”
—-- George Monbiot