Hanta has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening he resues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Hanta may be an idiot, as his boss calls him, but he is an idiot with a difference - the ability to quote the Talmud, Hegel, and Lao-tzu. In this baroque and winsome tale, Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera has called our very best writer today, celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word.