Bohumil Hrabal (28 March 1914 – 3 Feb 1997) was a Czech writer, often named among the best Czech writers of the 20th century. Hrabal began as a poet, producing a collection of lyrical poetry in 1948, entitled Ztracená ulička. It was withdrawn from circulation when the communist regime was established. In the early 1950s, Hrabal was a member of an underground literary group run by Jiří Kolář, an artist, poet, critic and central figure in Czechoslovak culture. Hrabal's two best-known novels are Closely Observed Trains (Czech: Ostře sledované vlaky) (1965) and I Served the King of England (1971), both of which were made into movies by the Czech director Jiří Menzel (in 1966 and 2006, respectively). Hrabal worked closely with Menzel on the script for Closely Observed Trains which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. Less