A fable about the power of books and knowledge, "finely balanced between pathos and comedy, " from one of Czechoslovakia's most popular authors ( Los Angeles Times ). A New York Times Notable Book Ha?tá has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening, he rescues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Ha?tá 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 "irresistibly eccentric romp, " the author Milan Kundera has called "our very best writer today" celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word ( The New York Times Book Review ).