[3][4][5][6][7] His father, Josef Hašek,[8] a mathematics teacher and religious fanatic,[9] died early of alcohol intoxication.

Because of this, he spent a lot of time in the country, with his grandfather from his mother's side, in the so-called Ražice dam-house, especially with his younger brother Bohuslav.

Hašek's childhood was ordinary, boyish, imbued with adventures with peers and reading Karl May and Jules Verne.

[12] Shortly after Hašek began his studies at the grammar school in Ječná Street, his father died.

[13] At the academy he made friends with Ladislav Hájek, and together they wrote and released a parody of the lyrical love poetry of May Shouts, in which Hašek first laughed at pathos and entered the field of humorous literature.

In the same year, he fell in love with Jarmila Mayerová, but because of his bohemian life, her parents did not consider him a suitable partner for their daughter.

When he was arrested for desecrating the Austro-Hungarian flag in Prague, Mayer's parents took her to the countryside in the hope that it would help end their relationship.

Animal World, was only the second time in his life that he was permanently employed, and now he lasted much longer in the job than he did at Banka Slavia, probably around 20 months.

Most widespread is the claim that Hašek “embellished” the magazine with stories about imaginary species and that this was the reason for his dismissal (an echo of Marek in "Švejk").

Further, claims exist that he advertised werewolves for sale and allegedly published stories about the terrible guzzler and other fantasy creatures in the magazine.

Hašek’s mystifications, enhanced by the tales of his friends, eventually entered the sphere of serious haškology and were later firmly planted in the anglophone world by Cecil Parrott, arguably the all-time leading Hašek-expert outside Czechoslovakia.

Parrott, in his otherwise solid biography “The Bad Bohemian” (1978), asserted that “Hašek was an accomplished and persuasive hoaxer”, then in a later chapter unreservedly propagated claims by Menger and Lada about Hašek advertising werewolves, having caused a stir even amongst foreign scientists with his “discovery” of a prehistoric flea (again echoed by Marek).

From 1911, he contributed to the Czech Word, then to the Torch, Humorist Letters, Nettle, Cartoons, and for some time led the Institute of Cynology,[10] which inspired his later book My Dog Shop.

He founded it with his friends in the Vinohrady pub called U zlatého litru (The Golden Liter) to parody the political life of that time.

He also wrote the satirical work Political and Social History of the Party of Mild Progress within the limits of the law, but it was not published in book form until 1963.

In the summer of 1912, Hašek spent several weeks in a pub in Chotěboř, where he could not be gotten rid of and the proprietors waited in vain for payment.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Hašek lived with the cartoonist Josef Lada, who later illustrated the Good Soldier Švejk.

In March, the Czechoslovak legions embarked on their well-known retreat, with the aim of joining the Western Front via Vladivostok.

He was sent to Samara and the following year he was director of the army printer in Ufa, chief of the department for work with foreigners, etc.

However, he was prevented from doing so by two circumstances: on the one hand, in support of the Kladno riots, he received from the Russian authorities an amount of 1,500 marks, which, however, was completely devalued by German inflation.

On 25 August 1921 Hašek left with his wife Shura and painter Jaroslav Panuška for Lipnice nad Sázavou.

He has never been and still is not perceived as a mere bohemian or humorist writer in Russia, but, on the contrary, as a very responsible Bolshevik army official and a respected intellectual.

A subject of debate and speculation is how Hašek behaved in the Red Army, especially at a time when he was a Commissioner – and deputy commander – of Bugulma.

[26] Hašek's closest collaborators in Russia – Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov ("Artem Vesely") or Vladimir Yakovlevich Zazubrin – later became victims of Stalin's repression.

For the poet Karel Toman he was branded a "traitor of the nation" by his red arm band and refused to shake his hand when he met him in a café after the war.

[30][31] His prose was based on his own real experiences, confusing investigation of his actual life, because it is not always clear what is true and what is only poetic hyperbole.

"[28] 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.

Vanek's completion was based on the continuation of 1921, but was highly criticized (Viktor Dyk, Jaroslav Durych, F. X. Šalda etc.).

"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.

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.