Jaroslav HaSek's world-famous satirical farce The Good Soldier svejk has been translated into over sixty languages, and is one of the best-known Czech works ever published. A soldier in the First World War who never actually sees any combat, Josef svejk is The Good Soldier's awkward protagonist-and none of the other characters can quite decide whether his bumbling efforts to get to the front are genuine or not. Often portrayed as one of the first anti-war novels, HaSek's classic satire is a tour-de-force of modernist writing, influencing later writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Joseph Heller. In this version, it has been sensitively and carefully abridged.