Book Review : The Death of Mr. Baltisberger

There are fourteen short stories in this collection by the Czechia author Bohumil Hrabal whose story ‘Closely Observed Trains’ is published by Penguin (there may be others but this is the only one I’ve seen).

In these fourteen stories, great events pass by the eyes of ordinary people while they are preoccupied with their own experiences and acquisitions.

The title story surprised me because the German motorcyclist Hans Baltisberger was killed while riding a 250cc NSU motorcycle at the 1956 Czechoslovak Grand Prix at the Masaryk Circuit in Brno.

Baltisberger crashed into a telegraph pole and died – this actually happened but Hrabal’s characters barely notice as they are more concerned with talking to each other and outdoing each other’s tales of exploits.