Hašek The Good Soldier Švejk Reading Order

Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk (1921–1923) is the funniest and most subversive anti-war novel in European literature — a picaresque of magnificent absurdity in which Švejk, an apparently simple-minded Czech dog dealer, navigates the insanity of the Austro-Hungarian military bureaucracy during the First World War with such cheerful compliance that it becomes impossible to tell whether he is an idiot or a genius. Hašek wrote it while in poor health, dying before the fourth and final part was complete; the novel was finished posthumously by his friend Karel Vaněk. Švejk's genius — if genius it is — lies in his literal-mindedness: he follows every order to its logical conclusion, which invariably reveals the order's absurdity. The novel is one of the founding texts of the Czech literary tradition of black humor, satirical compliance, and the resistance of the individual to bureaucratic tyranny.