The Good Soldier Svejk
Josef Švejk is a Prague dog-dealer with a weak heart, a vast reserve of pointless anecdotes, and a possibly strategic relationship with his own stupidity. When Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 and the Austro-Hungarian Empire lurches into the Great War, Švejk enthusiastically offers himself up to the army that wants to draft him anyway. Across hundreds of pages he bumbles through doctors, priests, field chaplains, supply officers, and entire trainloads of bureaucracy, deflecting every order with cheerful obedience that somehow always produces exactly the wrong result. Jaroslav Hašek's unfinished First World War novel, published between 1921 and 1923, is a raucous, drunken, wildly digressive masterpiece of Central European satire and one of the great antiwar books of the twentieth century.
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Prague dog seller Josef Svejk, an old discharged soldier who exudes a sweet, dim cheerfulness, is recalled to the Austro-Hungarian army at the start of the First World War. The novel follows him through army hospitals, prison cells, and a slow march east toward the Russian front.
The Good Soldier Svejk was written by Jaroslav Hasek (the metadata above misspells the name) and originally published in Czech between 1921 and 1923. Hasek died in 1923 before completing the novel.
The Good Soldier Svejk is a sprawling unfinished comic novel about a Czech soldier's misadventures in World War I. The Cecil Parrott translation is widely recommended for English readers. Most readers find the satirical voice accessible despite the length.
The Good Soldier Svejk is 20 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Good Soldier Svejk takes most readers under an hour to finish.
The Good Soldier Svejk is a standalone novel by Janoslav Hasher, not part of a series.
The Good Soldier Svejk is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
