A collection of short stories by the Czech Bohumil Hrabal--at times a little uneven but Hrabal gets credit at least from my point of view as a writer for his complete lack of pretense, and his characters for an almost indefagitable sense of their own possibilities. Hrabalian characters seem to have an innate sense of their own equality to all those around them and in another sense of their almost unique place in their world. They are quirky--yes but there's a bit more to it than that and Hrabal does not seem to need much space to flesh out the differences between them. They tend though to be common working people--opinionated, more often than not beer drinkers and definitely not sycophants. Anyway of the stories themselves my favorites were the title story about the death of a motorcycle racer; and 'Romance'--about a love affair between a man and a gypsy girl. They are all very good however and Hrabal's offbeat humor while maybe toned down at times is still almost always present. Nothing is sacred here--even a tragic event will be turned into a joke by someone and isn't that the way that things turn out in our own lives anyway? ( )