Josef Svejk [sh-vake] is a fictitious Czech veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army. After the outbreak of World War One, he's drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he despises.

In Book One, Jaroslav Hasek paints a picture of a society transitioning from the "normal" state on the way to catastrophe. He does it by weaving stories and fragments of tales of familiar archetypes of people and their institutions without any apparent rhyme or reason. Hasek is at his best when he describes the absurd situations in the lives of ordinary people, entangled in systems designed to keep them down or destroy them. Svejk survives, and uncovers the stupidity with his cunning and wit. He is a master in the art of survival "non plus ultra".

Despite the often mentioned literary influences, The Good Soldier Svejk is a novel that is far more inspired by Jaroslav Hasek's real life than any Cervantes or Rabelais. His detailed narratives of events ranging from mealtime preparations and drinking binges to religious rituals, the Catechism, and confinement in a lunatic asylum are mostly based on his personal experiences. Svejk's route to the war front largely corresponds to the author's journey to the battlefield in Galicia during the early days of July 1915. Hasek 's diverse background and immense knowledge is obvious throughout the novel, bringing such a strong flavor of validity to a work o fiction that it can, to some degree, be read as a historical document.

"In a world where the greedy and ambitious slam the public from crisis to crisis," wrote on Christmas Eve of 2000 Bob Hicks in the Portland Oregonian, "gratuitously wrecking daily life as they destroy states and pull down civilizations, Svejk represents the underground -- a passive-aggressive resister who beats the rules of the game by applying his own crazy logic to them. ...Unlike K., fellow Czech Franz Kafka's stunted stand-in for modern intellectual man, the rascal Svejk belongs to the men and women of the workaday world - the bartenders, cleaning women, gamekeepers, petty larcenists, lathe operators, janitors, drunkards, office workers, shopkeepers, undertakers, adulterers, nightclub bouncers, butchers, farmers, cab drivers and others who populate Hasek's imagination as they stumble through the lunacies of the first World War." All those people and many like them still populate our world today. They've been labeled "deplorables" and have proudly taken that insult as their nom de guerre. The increasing number and burden of absurdities they deal with is putting them in a position to relate to and viscerally understand Svejk.

Readers familiar with Hasek's satirical Czech novel of war and survival only from earlier English translations will likely be jolted by Sadlon's version... Hasek's masterpiece is revealed, in Sadlon's handling, as a book of greater bite, heft, and complexity. ...The result is challenging and provocative, a century on.

Takeaway: Illuminating translation of the human complexity of a Czech classic.