Jaroslav Hasek

Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923) was a Czech novelist, satirist and short story writer. He lived a colourful and chaotic life that took him from bohemian Prague to the battlefields of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. He is the author of one of the most celebrated comic novels in world literature. The Good Soldier Švejk follows the adventures of Josef Švejk, a seemingly simple Czech soldier who navigates the absurdities of the Austro-Hungarian military during the First World War with a combination of apparent idiocy and possible genius. The novel is a devastating satire of war, bureaucracy and the machinery of empire, told through the exploits of one of literature's most enduring comic characters. Though unfinished at Hašek's death, it remains a masterpiece. Available as both a book and an audiobook, The Good Soldier Švejk offers brilliant listening and reading — one of the funniest and most subversive anti-war novels ever written, as relevant today as when it was first published over a century ago.