CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS by Bohumil Hrabal...

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS by Bohumil Hrabal , translated by Edith Pargeter (Northwestern University: $8.95). Bohumil Hrabal’s coming-of-age story during the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, the source of Jim Meazel’s critically acclaimed film, is considered a ground-breaking work that helped free Czechoslovakian literature from the strictures of state-approved social realism. Haunted by fears of sexual inadequacy, Milos Hrma, a young railroad apprentice, longingly observes the rather ordinary people around him, whom he perceives as bolder, stronger and more imaginative. But the confirmation of his manhood enables him to rise above his mediocrity and perform a heroic act of sabotage, achieving a distinction in death that eluded him in life. Josef Skvorecky’s cogent introduction traces the development of Hrabal’s novel from a manuscript that circulated in the literary underground of postwar Prague to its present form.