Hrabal’s renovated summer cottage opens to public

Bohumil Hrabal's newly-renovated cottage in Kersko in the Nymburk region opened to the public on Saturday within celebrations marking the 110th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The cottage has been  restored to its original state when Hrabal spent his summers there. This is where Hrabal wrote most of his books, which have been translated into 28 languages. Among his most successful novels are Closely Watched Trains, the film version of which received an Oscar in 1968, and I Served the King of England which was also made into a movie in 2006. In the 1970s, when he was banned by the communist regime, his novels were copied by hand to be passed from reader to reader. He died on February 3, 1997.