Poor Schweik. How simple-minded he is. Possibly even a lunatic. For how else could he fail to recognize the matchless wisdom of his sergeant, his lieutenant, his colonel, and even his king, who all agree it is his noble duty to serve as a solid target for an enemy bullet. Can the author be so bold as to suggest that this miserable nobody, this disgraceful malingerer, this grain of sand in the great military machine, is the true hero of our times? In all of the literature of war there is no more deadly weapon than Schweik's blank gaze as he listens to a vital order, then marches resolutely away in the wrong direction. For in Schweik's vision of the world - a world in which it is good to live and bad to die - lies a force that can topple empires and reduce the inspiring spectacle of war to bloody absurdity. The brilliant satire of this masterpiece does more than delight the reader; it casts the healing light of sanity upon the festering wounds of this war-torn century. Schweik is the subject of films, plays, an opera by Robert Kurka, a musical, comic books, and statues, even the theme of restaurants in a number of European countries. The novel is also the subject of an unpublished operetta by Peter Gammond. Schweik has statues and monuments in Slovakia, Poland, Saint Petersburg, Omsk, Kiev, Lviv, and Donetsk. The first statue of Schweik in the Czech Republic was unveiled in 2014 in the village of Putim in South Bohemia. . . . . Jaroslav Hasek (1883 - 1923) was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist, bohemian and anarchist. He is best known for his novel The Good Soldier Schweik, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures. The novel has been translated into about sixty languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature.