SOURCE: Bednar, Marie. Review of The Red Commissar, by Jaroslav Hašek. Library Journal 107, no. 2 (15 January 1982): 194.

In the following review of The Red Commissar, Bednar maintains that the collection “confirms Hašek's talent as a keen observer of human follies.”

The author of the famous and very funny World War I novel The Good Soldier Švejk also wrote many stories and sketches, a sample of which is now appearing in English for the first time in excellent translations by Cecil Parrott [The Red Commissar]. Included are the early vignettes from which Hašek's hilarious satire of the Austrian army developed. The very amusing Bugulma tales are based on Hašek's own experiences in Eastern Russia. Here the satire is gentler than in the Švejk sketches and the picture of the Russian Civil War is much idealized. Although the humor of some of the 50 pieces included in the collection...