This is Hašek's unfinished comic novel set in Prague and across Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Josef Švejk, a cheerful, apparently simple-minded dog dealer, is drawn into the army and moves through barracks, hospitals, trains and offices, meeting officers, priests and informers along the way. He answers every order with eager, absurd devotion, and the result is chaos for everyone around him. Through long digressions and anecdotes, the book mocks bureaucracy, militarism and imperial pomp. It remains a landmark of satire and anti-war writing.