His most famous text by far, the four-part humorous novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, has been translated into 58 languages and several times filmed and dramatized. Individual parts of the novel have the names: "In the Background (1921)", "At the Front (1922)", "Famous Spanking (1922)" and "Unfinished Continuation of the Famous Spanking" (1923). Hašek's most important work is associated by many people with congenial illustrations by Josef Lada. Hašek did not manage to complete the book. The completion of the work by Karel Vaněk is far from Hašek's original conception. Vanek's completion was based on the continuation of 1921, but was highly criticized (Viktor Dyk, Jaroslav Durych, F. X. Šalda etc.). At first, the work had few followers. Ivan Olbracht was probably the first to mark it as a major work in the cultural section of Rudé právo. "It is one of the best books ever written in the Czech Republic, and Svejk is quite a new type in world literature, equivalent to Don Quixote, Hamlet, Faust, Oblomov, Karamazov," Olbracht wrote. Karel Čapek, Josef Čapek, Julius Fučík and Vítězslav Nezval, who connected Hašek's work with Dadaism, also adopted a positive attitude, as did Devětsil theoretician Bedřich Václavek. Discussions on the value of the work continued in later years. For example, Václav Černý opposed Švejk, but a wide range of Czech literary theorists, artists, and intellectuals had other views – the philosopher Karel Kosík saw the novel as "an expression of the absurdity of the alienated world"; he described Švejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism. The aesthetist Jan Grossman associated Švejk with existentialism; the literary theorist Jindřich Chalupecký described Švejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism,"; and the writer Milan Kundera described the novel as "the pure irrationality of history.".
His most famous text by far, the four-part humorous novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, has been translated into 58 languages and several times filmed and dramatized. Individual parts of the novel have the names: "In the Background (1921)", "At the Front (1922)", "Famous Spanking (1922)" and "Unfinished Continuation of the Famous Spanking" (1923). Hašek's most important work is associated by many people with congenial illustrations by Josef Lada. Hašek did not manage to complete the book. The completion of the work by Karel Vaněk is far from Hašek's original conception. Vanek's completion was based on the continuation of 1921, but was highly criticized (Viktor Dyk, Jaroslav Durych, F. X. Šalda etc.). At first, the work had few followers. Ivan Olbracht was probably the first to mark it as a major work in the cultural section of Rudé právo. "It is one of the best books ever written in the Czech Republic, and Svejk is quite a new type in world literature, equivalent to Don Quixote, Hamlet, Faust, Oblomov, Karamazov," Olbracht wrote Karel Čapek, Josef Čap.ek, Julius Fučík and Vítězslav Nezval, who connected Hašek's work with Dadaism, also adopted a positive attitude, as did Devětsil theoretician Bedřich Václavek. Discussions on the value of the work continued in later years For example, Václav Černý opposed Švejk, but a wide range of Czech literary theorists, artists, and intellectuals had other views – the philosopher Karel Kosík saw the novel as "an expression of the absurdity of the alienated world"; he described Švejk as the "tragic bard of European nihilism. The aesthetist Jan Grossman associated Švejk with existentialism; the literary theorist Jindřich Chalupecký described Švejk as the ".tragic bard of European nihilism,"; and the writer Milan Kundera described the novel as "the pure irrationality of history.".