[In The Death of Mr. Baltisberger] short stories combine exuberant, exaggerative humor with an incongruous attention to realistic detail. The mixture is effective for the author's purpose, which is to draw attention to the ways in which ordinary people survive exasperating circumstances. Since Mr. Hrabal is a lively, intelligent, interesting writer, he remains largely unpublished in his native Czechoslovakia. (p. 122)

Phoebe-Lou Adams, in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1975 by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), February, 1975.

["The Death of Mr. Baltisberger" contains fourteen] harmless bagatelles from the Czech author of the novella for the film "Closely Watched Trains," all devoid of any compellingness, direction or humanity. Hrabal seems to share the Czech proclivity for simplistic political satire feebly expressed through surrealistically metaphorical plots—heavy-handed allegories on the insanity and incompetence of bureaucracy which get their entire motivation from the dialectic incongruity of pompousness and mediocrity. These...