Closely Watched Trains

For twenty-two-year-old Milos bumbling apprentice at a sleepy Czech railway station life is full of worries: his burdensome virginity his love for the pretty conductor Masha the scandalous goings-on in the station master's office. Beside them the part he will come to play against the occupying Germans seems a simple affair in Bohumil Hrabal's touching absurd masterpiece of humour humanity and heroism.