The Good Soldier Svejk

Good-natured and garrulous, Svejk becomes the Austrian army’s most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of the First World War – although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it.

Playing cards, getting drunk and becoming a general nuisance, the resourceful Svejk uses all his natural cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the doctors, police, clergy and officers who chivvy him towards battle. The story of a ‘little man’ caught in a vast bureaucratic machine, ‘The Good Soldier Svejk’ combines dazzling word play and piercing satire to create a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.