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Too Loud a Solitude

  • Book
  • 1976
  • #Fiction
Bohumil Hrabal
@BohumilHrabal
(Author)
www.goodreads.com
Paperback
4.3/5 254 ratings
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4.01/5 8k ratings
3 Recommenders
3 Mentions
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TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Haňťa - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process o... Show More

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Haňťa - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which come from his books. He has rescued many from jaws of hydraulic press and now his house is filled to the rooftops. Destroyer of the written word, he is also its perpetrator.But when a new automatic press makes his job redundant there's only one thing he can do - go down with his ship.This is an eccentric romp celebrating the indestructability- against censorship, political opression etc - of the written word.

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Number of Pages: 98

ISBN: 0349102627

ISBN-13: 9780349102627

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Austin Kleon @austinkleon
  • Curated in 21 Good Books I Read in 2021 (with bonus 10 books)
The Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal once worked as a trash compactor, and, according to the critic James Wood, he “rescued books from the compacting machine and built a library of them in the garage of his country cottage outside Prague.” He based his wild, short novel on his experiences, giving them to the fictional narrator, Hanta, who says he “can’t quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books.” (Same.)
Wiktoria Dalach @wdalach · Oct 17, 2022
  • Answered to What’s your favorite book about loneliness?
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"Too Loud a Solitude" by Bohumil Hrabal. It starts with "For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story". It just grabs your heart and doesn't let go until the end.
Michael Aliprandini @MichaelAlipran5 · Oct 18, 2022
  • Answered to What’s your favorite book about loneliness?
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