The Good Soldier Švejk

Hašek's great comic novel follows the imperturbable Josef Švejk, whose blank-faced obedience makes a mockery of the Austro-Hungarian army, from his arrest in a Prague pub through the bungled machinery of the First World War toward a front he never quite reaches. The route is real Bohemia: the tavern U Kalicha where it starts, the garrison at České Budějovice, the famous 'anabasis' on foot around the South Bohemian villages, and the training camp at Bruck an der Leitha before the troop trains east.

Josef Švejk

U Kalicha (The Chalice), Prague

Book 1

Over a beer at U Kalicha, Švejk's cheerful remarks about the assassination of the Archduke get him hauled off by a plain-clothes policeman, and the machinery of the state closes on him. His imperturbable idiocy, real or feigned, will now be turned loose inside the army to comic and devastating effect.

Book 1

explicit Švejk is arrested for careless talk in the pub U Kalicha (The Chalice) in Prague, a real tavern on Na Bojišti street that still trades on the association today.

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