SOURCE: King, Francis. “In and Out of the Lap of Luxury.” Spectator 262, no. 8393 (20 May 1989): 35.

In the following review, King examines the plot of I Served the King of England, finding that “everything is extravagantly magnified” rather than realistic.

At first the hero and narrator of this Czech novel [I Served The King of England] seems to be the cousin-german of the hero and narrator of Thomas Mann's last full-length novel, Felix Krull the Confidence Trickster. But if Mann's Krull is a wolf, relentlessly preying on all those with whom he comes into contact, Hrabal's Ditie is a fox, no less relentlessly ingratiating himself. Krull is characterised, from his earliest years, by a sturdy cynicism; Ditie retains, into middle age, a fragile innocence. The result is that Krull is essentially detestable, Ditie essentially likeable.

Like Krull, Ditie starts work in a hotel. So tiny that the rest of the...