Bohumil Hrabal () ( 28 March 1914, Brno – 3 February 1997, Prague ) was a Czech writer, regarded as one of the best writers of the 20th century.

Bohumil Hrabal was born in Brno ( Balbínova ul.

According to the organisers of a recent Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his biological father was “ probably ” Bohumil Blecha ( b. 1893-d, 1970 ), who was a year older than Marie, a friend from the neighbourhood and the son of a teacher.

Blecha ’ s daughter, Drahomíra Blechová-Kalvodová, says her father told her when she was 18 that Hrabal was her half-brother.

Hrabal was baptised Bohumil František Kilián.

She worked there with her future husband, František Hrabal ( b. 1889-d. 5 June 1966 ); a František Hrabal was listed as Bohumil's godfather when he was baptised on 4 February 1914, but František was also the first name of Bohumil's future step-grandfather, a soft-drinks trader.

František Hrabal, Hrabal ’ s stepfather, was a friend of Hrabal ’ s probable biological father, according to Blechová-Kalvodová.

Hrabal's half-brother, Břetislav Josef Hrabal, was born later that year ( b. 25 September 1916-d. 30 May 1985 ); Břetislav ( Slávek ) is said to have been an excellent raconteur.

Hrabal ’ s uncle was Bohuslav Kilián ( 1892 – 1942 ), a lawyer, journalist and publisher of the cultural magazines Salon and Měsíc ( the latter had a German version, Der Monat, that was distributed throughout Europe, but not in Nazi Germany ).

In the early 1950s, Hrabal was a member of an underground literary group run by Jiří Kolář, an artist, poet, critic and central figure in Czechoslovak culture.

After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by troops from the Warsaw Pact, Hrabal was banned from publishing.

Hrabal steered clear of political engagement ; he was not a signatory of Charter 77, a protest against the communist regime drawn up principally by Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout.

It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.

He stayed in Prague for 10 years, where he was invited by Oriental Institute to initiate a program of translation of modern Czech writers like Karel Capek, Milan Kundera, and Bohumil Hrabal, to Hindi ; he also learnt the Czech language, and translated nine world classics to Hindi, before returning home in 1968, as the result of Prague Spring.

Hrabal lived in the city from the late 1940s onward, for much of it ( 1950 – 1973 ) at 24 Na Hrázi ul.

In June 1934, Hrabal left school with a certificate that said he could be considered for a place at university on a technical course.

The family moved in August 1919 to Nymburk, a small town on the banks of the Labe ( Elbe ), where František Hrabal became the brewery's manager.

Hrabal took private classes in Latin for a year, passing a state exam in the town of Český Brod with an ' adequate ' grade on 3 October 1935.

* To spend our days betting on three-legged horses with beautiful names — Bohumil Hrabal

Bohumil Hrabal painted among his beloved cats on the " Hrabal Wall " in Prague

Bohumil Hrabal ’ s novel Closely Watched Trains is based on the act of sabotage in Lysá nad Labem during the Second World War in 1945.

* Bohumil Hrabal embodies as no other the fascinating Prague.

Bohumil Hrabal became the most prominent of the contemporary prose authors, with his works full of colloquialisms and non-traditional narrative structures, and the absence of official moral frameworks.

On the border between official and unofficial literature stood authors of historical novels ( Korner, Karel Michal ), and well as Bohumil Hrabal and Ota Pavel.

In 1920, Hrabal began at the primary school in Nymburk.

Each of those tickets was of great value to its rightful recipient.

Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

When the sea was visible ahead of them, the relief was as great as if the sun had come out.

Meredith was irritated when the Grafin knocked at his door and told him, `` She is a great beauty!!

`` Karipo was great goddess, told our mothers that men were not necessary except to father children '', the crone told me.

This was the land of the sladang, the great water buffalo with horns forty inches across the spread.

It was a fortunate time in which to build, for the seventeenth century was a great period in Persian art.

Many believe -- and understandably -- that the great difference between the Constitution of the Southern Confederacy and the Federal Constitution was that the former recognized the right of each state to secede.

The double editorial on Two Aspects Of `` The U.S. Spirit '' was subtly calculated to suggest a moral sanction for gambles great as well as small, reflecting popular approval of this questionable attitude toward the highest office in the land.

William Gilmore Simms, sturdy realist that he was, pleaded for a natural robustness such as he found in his favorites the great Elizabethans, to vivify the pale writings being produced around him.

United States Senator Royal S. Copeland was wearing the robes of Santa Claus and a great white beard ; ;

While I was sitting at one of the rewrite telephones with my derby and my great beard, Arthur Brisbane whizzed in with some editorial copy in his hand.

Yet General Suvorov -- who had never forgotten hearing his adored Czarina declare that all truly great men had oddities -- was mad only north, northwest.

It was hit by a shell fired by the bombarding Venetian army and the great central portion of the temple was blown to smithereens.

Another classic sight that gave us considerable pleasure was the Evzone sentry, in his ballet skirt with great pompons on his shoes, who was patrolling up and down in front of the palace.

The great spectacle was a source of rancor, and Son et Lumiere, which the French were trying to promote with the Athenians, was the reason.

The Boston elders were great at befuddling the opposition with torrents of ecclesiastical obscurities, but Gorton was better.

Peters insisted that this impression was a great misunderstanding, and evidently, from the quarrel, obtained an unfavorable impression of Morgan's judgment.

The younger men, Vere, and Pembroke, who was also Edward's cousin and whose Lusignan blood gave him the swarthy complexion that caused Edward of Carnarvon's irreverent friend, Piers Gaveston, to nickname him `` Joseph the Jew '', were relatively new to the game of diplomacy, but Pontissara had been on missions to Rome before, and Hotham, a man of great learning, `` jocund in speech, agreeable to meet, of honest religion, and pleasing in the eyes of all '', and an archbishop to boot, was as reliable and experienced as Othon himself.