Books like Ostře sledované vlaky by Bohumil Hrabal

Alice, a curious girl, follows a rabbit into Wonderland and the Looking‑Glass world, meeting eccentric characters like the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s celebrated children’s fantasy.

Edith Grossman's acclaimed English translation of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic "Don Quixote" brings the famed knight-errant and his loyal squire Sancho Panza to life in 16th‑century Spain.

Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron is a 14th‑century collection of 100 Italian tales told by ten young people who flee the plague‑ravaged Florence to a villa in Fiesole, each day presenting stories framed by a rule and a closing canzone.

In this Steinbeck novella, soldiers’ arrival exposes the fragile resilience of a small town amidst the looming tensions of World War II.

Framboise Simon returns to a Loire‑bank village where her past as the daughter of a wartime figure remains concealed. A scrapbook of recipes and memories she inherited from her mother holds the key to a tragedy that scarred her childhood.

Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most beloved and accessible works. Closely Watched Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Miloš Hrma, a timid young railroad apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. Day after day as he watches trains fly by, he torments himself with the suspicion that he himself is being watched and with fears of impotency. Hrma finally affirms his manhood and, with a sense of peace and purpose he has never known before, heroically confronts a trainload of Nazis. Milan Kundera called the novel "an incredible union of earthly humor and baroque imagination." After receiving acclaim as a novel, Closely Watched Trains was made into an internationally successful film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 1967. This edition includes a foreword by Josef Škvorecký.

In 1940, as London burns under the Blitz, American radio reporter Frankie Bard seeks to rally the U.S. to war while postmistress Iris James in Massachusetts keeps town secrets safe. Three mid‑life lovers confront the clash between ordinary life and global conflict.

In Nazi‑occupied Poland, 19‑year‑old Emma Bau’s world collapses when her husband vanishes and she is forced into the ghettos. Smuggled out, she assumes a new identity and becomes the assistant of Kommandant Richwalder, using the position to aid the resistance while a dangerous romance threatens all.

In 1943, Captain Mike Blackwood, a Royal Marine Commando, must lead his men in a daring amphibious assault on Sicily, drawing on a century‑long family legacy of seafaring bravery.

Three generations of English women navigate love, war, and destiny in ‘Consequences,’ tracing the lives of Lorna, her daughter Molly, and granddaughter Ruth from 1930s Britain to the post‑war era.