[1] Hrabal was born in Židenice (suburb of Brno) on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province of Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother, Marie Božena Kiliánová (1894–1970).

According to the organisers of a 2009 Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his biological father was probably Bohumil Blecha (1893–1970), a teacher's son a year older than Marie, who was her friend from the neighbourhood.

Until the age of three, he lived mainly with his grandparents, Kateřina Kiliánová (born Bartlová) (d. 1950)[2][4] and Tomáš Kilián (died 1925), a descendant of a French soldier injured at the Battle of Austerlitz,[5][6] in Brno, while his mother worked in Polná as an assistant book-keeper in the town's brewery.

In September 1925, he spent one year at a grammar school in Brno (now Gymnázium třída Kapitána Jaroše, later attended by Milan Kundera).

He took private classes in Latin for a year, passing the state exam in the town of Český Brod with an "adequate" grade on 3 October 1935.

He worked variously as an insurance agent (1946–47), a travelling salesman (1947–49) and a manual labourer alongside the graphic artist Vladimír Boudník in the Kladno steelworks (1949–52, and again briefly, 1953), an experience that inspired the "total realism" of texts such as Jarmilka that he was writing at the time.

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.

In 1975, Hrabal gave an interview to the publication Tvorba in which he made self-critical comments, which enabled some of his work to appear in print, albeit typically in heavily edited form.

[21][22] Hrabal's interlocutors were anonymous in the journal, but it was later discovered that the published interview was at least a third version of the text,[22] and that the more explicitly ideological statements were inserted by editors Karel Sýs and Jaromír Pelc according to contemporary party doctrine.

[21] Some young dissidents were incensed by Hrabal's actions; poet Ivan "Magor" Jirous organised an event on Kampa Island at which his books were burned,[22][23][21] and the singer Karel Kryl called him a "whore".

[21][22][25] Ludvík Vaculík, who had published his work in samizdat and would later continue to do so,[26] defended him, saying that the interview demonstrated that Hrabal was a writer of such standing that he could not be suppressed and the regime had had to acknowledge him.

Hrabal was a noted raconteur,[22][27][25] and much of his story-telling took place in a number of pubs including, most famously, U zlatého tygra (At the Golden Tiger) on Husova Street in Prague.

Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" — simpletons with occasional inadvertently profound thoughts — who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy life despite harsh circumstances they found themselves in.

[citation needed] Much of the impact of Hrabal's writing derives from his juxtaposition of the beauty and cruelty found in everyday life.

[citation needed] He is known for his "comic, slightly surreal tales about poor workers, eccentrics, failures, and nonconformists"; his early stories are about "social misfits and happily disreputable people".

[34] Alongside fellow satirists Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek and Milan Kundera, Hrabal is often described as one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century.