Bohumil Hrabal (Brno, 1914–Prague, 1997) is considered one of the greatest European writers of the second half of the 20th century. His adoptive father was the manager of a brewery in Nymburk, where Hrabal spent his childhood and which permeated all his work. After studying law, he held various jobs: railway worker during the war, an experience he reflected in his novel Closely Watched Trains; insurance agent; traveling salesman; and packer at a paper recycling plant, about which he wrote in Too Loud a Solitude. He began his writing career with a collection of poems, published in 1948 and banned a few months later when communism came to power in Czechoslovakia. He was unable to publish his first book, A Pearl at the Bottom, until 1963, the year he decided to dedicate himself solely to writing. Along with those already mentioned, his novels *I Served the King of England*, *Weddings at Home*, and *The Little Town Where Time Stood Still* stand out, almost all of them written in the 1970s, when his work was once again banned. He died after falling from his room on the fifth floor of Bulovka Hospital in Prague. In his works, he often reflected on the idea of suicide. As was his wish, he was buried in an oak coffin inscribed with *Pivovar Polná* (Polná Brewery), the place where his parents met.
