Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

In Czechoslovakia, Bohumil Hrabal is considered almost a national hero.

His novels, such as Closely Watched Trains in 1965, came at the end of the period (the 'thaw') of social realism and opened new vistas of writing beyond propaganda.

Social realism began as an attempt to portray only the rosier aspects of Communist life, to 'paint pink' any death not seen as grandly heroic, and water the sex down to innuendo. Many books were banned or censored so heavily they were unpublishable.

Closely Watched Trains was first written in 1949 at the beginning of this period and was rejected many times due to the characters' sexual drives. Resubmitted in 1962, it was finally printed in 1965 when the Stalinists were keeping a low profile. It was an essentially different book and became a bestseller in the 1960s.

In 1945, the townspeople are accustomed to Germans flying overhead, and if they get shot down, they quickly mobilize to strip the wreck for parts. Twenty-one-year-old Milos Hrma works at the train station dispatch office, switching the trains between the two main tracks. There are a few others who work there, including Dispatcher Hubricka and Virginia Svata, about whom bawdy rumors run rampant when she works the night shift. Along with the usual mail and passenger trains (often shot to pieces by guns and grenades), there are SS transports and German officers to deal with.

He meets Masha when they are assigned to paint a railway fence, and they being a friendship. Masha is a conductress who helps load the German's onto hospital trains.

While the war is seen through train business, the station itself is full of ribald stories - strip games, couples on the couch, and a certain lady passenger who shows Milos extra attention. On the night of a terrible air-raid on Dresden, Hubricka tells Milos of a twenty-eight car ammunition train coming through the station. Milos agrees to help in the plan of derailing or stopping the cargo, bringing about a personal and human ending.

Closely Watched Trains was made into a popular film, winning the Best Foreign Picture Award at the 1967 Oscars. Two of Hrabal's other novels are I Served The King Of England and Too Loud A Solitude.

I'd recommend this many layered book. It's a true bestselling classic.

1965 / Paperback / 88 pages