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What Members Thought
My initial reaction to this book after reading the first few chapters is that it reminded me of Catch-22. Sure enough, after some research, I found out that Heller credits Hasek's work as one of his key influences. If you appreciate the biting satire, base humor, and no-holds-barred castigation of bureaucratic organizations in Catch-22, you love it in Svejk as well.
Sveyk, the (seemingly) good-natured and dopey Dudley-Do-Right of the Czech contingent in the Austria-Hungarian army during WWI is a ...more
Sveyk, the (seemingly) good-natured and dopey Dudley-Do-Right of the Czech contingent in the Austria-Hungarian army during WWI is a ...more
Bumping this up from four to five stars on (im)mature consideration. I have been avoiding reading this because I thought it was all about battle and soldiers. Little did I know that it was actually about a proto-Clouseau character and way funnier and less dark than I thought it would be. It's called satire and dark humor, but there's not really a lot of true darkness here. It's not grim or austere or perplexing the way Orwell or Kafka are. It's baudy, earthy, and silly, and has a surprisingly ea
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2.5 stars.
This wasn't my sort of book. I'm glad I read it to the end though, because I enjoyed the last few chapters and the afterword more than the rest of the book. ...more
This wasn't my sort of book. I'm glad I read it to the end though, because I enjoyed the last few chapters and the afterword more than the rest of the book. ...more
Jun 30, 2015
Meghan
marked it as to-read
Aug 01, 2015
Jennifer
marked it as to-read
Jul 21, 2016
Dianne
marked it as to-read
Sep 04, 2018
Nike
marked it as to-read
May 10, 2022
Gerard
marked it as to-read
May 31, 2022
Gala
marked it as to-read
