Group Read - May 2009 - POLAND

Here's the thread for Poland, folks!

I'd prefer to keep it to one single thread, as for Argentina, so that everyone knows where to post - so this thread is for both recommendations and discussion.

I'm not going to post a list of questions so feel free to comment on whatever aspects of your chosen book(s) you feel are of interest, preferably prefaced with a couple of details about the author to give us some background.

Although I have an increasing interest in Polish literature which has come through learning the language, I still don't know much about it, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing what others chose to read, and what you think about your choices. I'm going to post a brief history of Poland, and then it's over to you for recommendations!

Brief history of Poland

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a Central European country bordered by Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia and the Baltic Sea.

The establishment of a Polish state is often identified with the adoption of Christianity by its ruler Mieszko I, in 966, when the state covered territory similar to that of present-day Poland. From then until the end of the Second World War both the western and the eastern borders underwent significant changes as Poland lost and regained its independence, fragmented and reunited, was invaded, and was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria, causing the state of Poland to disappear from the map of Europe for over a century, from the 1790s until the First World War. (From a literary point of view it is worth noting that the "Poland" which was partitioned was in fact Poland plus Lithuania (and modern Ukraine and Belarus), which explains why the great Polish epic poem Pan Tadeusz (Adam Mickiewicz, 1834), the "national poem" of Poland, opens with the line "O Lithuania, my country!").

Poland enjoyed independence between the two World Wars but was invaded by both Germany and Russia in 1939. Poland suffered heavy losses in World War II, losing over 6 million of its citizens, half of them Jews. After the war, Poland's borders were shifted one last time, causing the forced migration of thousands of people, mostly Poles, Germans, Ukranians and Jews.

After the war Poland fell under Soviet control, and was a communist state between 1945 and 1989. Unrest in 1980 led to the creation of the independent trade union "Solidarity" (Solidarność) at the Gdansk shipyards, with support from workers across Poland. Despite savage repression during the martial law period in 1981, Solidarność became a force for political change and eroded the dominance of the communist party, heralding the end of communism across central and eastern Europe.

Democracy was restored in Poland in 1989, with Lech Wałęsa, one of the original members of Solidarność, elected to president in 1990. Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.

Poland is an almost exclusively Roman Catholic country, with one of the highest proportions of practising Catholics in Europe. The population of Poland is extremely homogeneous (in the 2002 census, almost 97% said they were of Polish nationality).

The capital of Poland is Warsaw, with both Gniezno and Krakow having been the capital in the past.

Hi All

If anyone gets stuck for ideas on Polish lit, there is a database at my site www.polishwriting.net of pretty much everything fiction poetry translated into English.

A few of my picks:

Jan Kochanowski's Laments is an early poetic masterpiece on the death of his daughter, heart-rending and beautiful.

The ultimate 19th century Dickensian classic is Boleslaw Prus's The Doll.

Then Sienkiewicz (first Nobel winner) of course, best known outside Poland for Quo Vadis but in Poland With Fire and Sword and the accompanying trilogy.

One author I am interested in is Eliza Orzeszkowa who had a few books translated into English. The Argonauts is a tale of dissolute bourgeois Warsaw life well told and is available for free on Project Gutenberg. She also wrote one of the best regarded Polish novels on the Jewish community, Meir Ezofowicz.

Hard to find in English (and expensive when you do) are Wladyslaw Reymont's Peasants, the second Nobel winner, and Stefan Żeromski's Ashes, early 20th century realist novels and very close to Polish hearts. The Coming Spring is another classic Zeromski available in English.

Not written in Polish, but Isaac Bashevis Singer's novels evoke the vanished world of the Shtetl's superbly.

Many will know Bruno Schulz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Konwicki, and the Nobel winners Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, all worthy of your attention of course, but I would also recommend Gustaw Herling, Andrzej Szczypiorski and Hanna Krall from the 70s and 80s.

Getting more up to date we have Andrzej Stasiuk, my favourite being Tales of Galicia, wunderkind Dorota Maslowska and the Calvino-influenced Magdalena Tulli.

Lastly, my two absolute favourites: Zbigniew Herbert, who needs no introduction, but I would especially point you towards Barbarian in the Garden and Still life with Bridle, collections of essays on European art and history, and Olga Tokarczuk, most of whose works are available in German and French, but up till now anglophones are only able to savour House of Day, House of Night. If I had to pick just one book, that would be it.

Edit: a lot of the touchstones are not going to the right book, I'm working on it!

agl -- you convinced me -- I just ordered a coup of House of Day, House of Night from Amazon -- looks fascinating!

I just had to mention a very strange book that I recently read by a Polish author, although I'll be looking for another book for when we do our Polish theme. It was book called Rat by Andrzej Zaniewski, and it told of the life of a rat, but seen through the rat's eyes! The writing was excellent, so if you're up for a book that's a bit unusual, look for it...

I'm planning to read The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland as my non -fiction read, if I have time I'll search for a novel as well.

>4 janeajones: jane, I think that is the book I purchased a while back for this theme. It will be interesting to have two of us read it!

I've just ordered House of Day, House of Night and Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer, the first volume in The Library of America's Isaac Bashevis Singer series. These stories were originally published in English in the 1950s and 1960s, but pertain to his years in Poland before he emigrated to the United States.

The touchstone for Singer's book won't display; I'll try this instead:

Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer

Edited to provide information about the Singer book.

Thanks so much, agl, wonderful list, full of treasures. Could you possibly tell me more about your #1 recommendation, House of Day? Would you describe it as a traditional narrative, or magic realism, or post-modern, or...? How intrusive is the author in the story?

And also thanks very much rachbxl for the history overview. Slight quibble: If Poland disappeared from the 1870s to First World War, 1914-1918, that is not "over a century". Nevertheless, a fascinating history of a country as oppressed as my homeland, the former Czechoslovakia.

House of Day, House of Night is somewhat postmodern in that it is composed of various narratives which are interweaved. There are first person authorial parts, but not 'intrusive' in the sense say of Milan Kundera popping his head into the frame to give some commentary on the characters. There are also somewhat magical elements, but these are more in line with the mystical and religious themes rather than Marquez style integrated straight into the action.

For me, she creates a satisfying microcosm because it gives a real atmosphere of modern day rural Poland, while also including aspects of the historical context (especially the former German territories), and then anchors it in the mystical religious aspects of Central Europe.

In terms of a grand narrative to lose oneself in, this is a bit more experimental than that, but at the same time very accessible. It is also an indication of what is being read in Poland these days, she is incredibly popular there.

I just realised I failed to mention Paweł Huelle, especially Mercedes-Benz, where the narrative is a bit more traditional, also excellent.

Maybe also good to mention Czeslaw Milosz's prose works like Native Realm, wonderful descriptions of nature.

I quite fancy House of Day, House of Night but it's a bit pricey, even s/h. I've put out feelers on the swap sites and will see what comes up.

Are any of those suggestions light reads, more along the style of Marina Lewycka? (Is she Polish??)

I have a collection of poetry - In Praise of the Unfinished by Julia Hartwig that I didn't complete. May would be a good time to reread and finish it;-)

Marina Lewycka is Ukrainian. A couple of lighter choices:

Girl Nobody by Tomek Tryzna or Madame by Antoni Libera. I would say Mercedes Benz by Huelle is fairly light.

Another lighter comic novel is His Current Woman and the just published and very funny The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch

Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski is a recent crime novel (although set in Germany before the war).

Obviously (how could I forget him?) Stanislaw Lem if you like science fiction (but not light!). A recent fantasy novel is The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski.

>9 polutropos: Er, no, it's not, you're quite right. Numbers aren't my thing but I usually manage to do better than that. I'll go and correct the date now...

I've been meaning to read Gombrowicz's Ferdyduke for ages. Now I just have to find a copy.

Since I'm really interested in Holocaust literature, I've read tons of books set in Poland. Probably my favorites books set in Poland are The King of Children: the Life and Death of Janusz Korczak and The True Story of Hansel and Gretel -- neither of which were written by Polish writers. I've read two of Korczak's books also; he was a Polish writer and one of the coolest people I've ever heard of.

Since I found out about this LT group at the beginning of April, I'm not going to really get in a "slavery" themed book. But, I think I can work a Poland in. I've got The Zookeeper's Wife on Mt. TBR, so I'll read that for May :-)

I've put The True Story of Hansel and Gretel on my wishlist, but that looks like I'll be waiting a while. I did recently manage to mooch a copy of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, though, which I'm excited about.

I've read The Zookeeper's Wife. I thought it was kind of disappointing. I mean, it wasn't bad, and it had a great beginning, but the quality seemed to decline as the book went on and a lot of questions were left unanswered. I think it's worth reading -- once.

I LOVED The True Story of Hansel and Gretel. It's one of my favorite books.

I have now started House of Day, House of Night so that I will be ready to discuss in May. Anyone else reading that?

According to my cataloguing, I have a copy of House of Day, House of Night, so if I can find it, I'll jump into to it in a week or so.....

I have it, but I won't start reading it for at least a couple of weeks.

I just bought a copy of The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch, which was released this month by Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester. The excerpt from the book sounded interesting, and it wasn't until I looked at it later that I realized the writer is "one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists."

This is an excerpt from Open Letter's web page on the book:

The Mighty Angel concerns the alcoholic misadventures of a writer named Jerzy. Eighteen times he's woken up in rehab. Eighteen times he's been released—a sober and, more or less, healthy man—after treatment at the hands of the stern therapist Moses Alias I Alcohol. And eighteen times he's stopped off at the liquor store on the way home, to pick up the supplies that are necessary to help him face his return to a ruined apartment.

While he's in rehab, Jerzy collects the stories of his fellow alcoholics—Don Juan the Rib, The Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, the Sugar King, the Queen of Kent, the Hero of Socialist Labor—in an effort to tell the universal, and particular, story of the alcoholic, and to discover the motivations and drives that underlie the alcoholic's behavior.

A simultaneously tragic, comic, and touching novel, The Mighty Angel displays Pilch’s caustic humor, ferocious intelligence, and unparalleled mastery of storytelling.

So, I'll also read this next month.

I was planning on reading Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz, which I've owned since the 70s but never read (it was part of a boxed set of four books of "Writers from the Other Europe" selected by Philip Roth. But I've been inspired by the recommendations in this thread to order several other books, including House of Day, House of Night and The Mighty Angel. Maybe Ferdydurke too. Of course, I won't be able to read all of these in one month, along with my other reading, but that never stopped me from adding to the toppling TBR piles!

>23 rebeccanyc: - rebeccanyc - Have you read The Street of Crocodiles also? I read them both recently and was absolutely blown away by Schulz's prose. One of the books I have for Poland is Drohobycz, Drohobycz by Henryk Grynberg, which includes a reconstruction of Schulz's last days and death. There's another one by him - The Jewish War and Victory - that I might try to get in too.

Also, what were the other books recommended by Roth for the series?

As I mentioned, Sanatorium under the Sign of an Hourglass was in a set of four novels that I bought in the late 70s, put on the shelf, and never read. The other books in the set were This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis, and Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera. The other books in the series, at the time of the publication of the set, were Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski, The Farewell Party by Kundera, and The Street of the Crocodiles.

So I have never read this Schulz or any others, and I'm looking forward to it even more now that I have your recommendation.

Most, if not all, of the "Polish" literature I have read has actually been Yiddish literature, by Jewish writers of the 19th or early 20th century, and thus I am hoping this thread will inspire me to a more modern and more Polish reading experience.

My Polish suggestions, probably available in English, and apart from some already mentioned above (avoiding the irritating Poland=Holocaust equation):

Jan Potocki's famous The manuscript found in Saragossa (written in French, reconstructed from various sources, including early Polish translations), a book whose history is as intricate as the one it presents

Some fin-de-siecle decadents and symbolists (on second thought, these are probably hard to find, but let's mention them anyway):

Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Stefan Zeromski, Boleslav Leśmian

In print:

Stanislaw Lem, one of the rare science fiction writers of true literary merit--pick anything, Solaris is of course most famous

Stefan Grabinski, modern gothic ("modern" as in pre-WWII, not contemporary)

Sławomir Mrożek and Leszek Kolakowski wrote wonderful satires (the latter is also a well-known philosopher and historian of Marxism), I recommend highly Mrozek's story collection The elephant and Kolakowski's The key to heaven and Conversations with the devil. (Mrozek is mainly a playwright, but his stories are delightful.)

The Dedalus book of Polish fantasy offers a tantalising glimpse into a category of Polish fiction almost impossible to find in English. Unfortunately, the Dedalus book itself is out of print, so I paste below the selections, on the off chance you may run elsewhere into some of the works mentioned:

Co-existence by Slawomir Mrozek; The Lady with the Medallion by Andrzej Szczypiorski; The Greater Punishment by Marek S. Huberath; Father Faust by Tadeusz Micinski (extract); Strange Street by Franciszek Mirandola; The Vampire by Wladyslaw Reymont (extract); The Shadow of Queen Barbara by Lucjan Siemienski; The Head Full of Screaming Hair by Jan Barszczewski; I am Burnin'! by Henryk Rzewuski; The Grey Room by Stefan Grabinski; The Black Hamlet by Stefan Grabinski; The Gentleman with a Goatee by Kornel Makuszynski; Dinner at Countess Kotlubay's by Witold Gombrowicz; Father's Experiments by Bruno Schulz (extract); Mother Joanna of the Angels by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (extract); The Legs of Isolda Morgan by Bruno Jasienski; The White Worms by Wiktor Woroszylski; Dragon by Andrzej Bursa; The Golden Galley by Jacek Dukaj

Sienkiewicz was mentioned above, and some of his big (physically too!) novels; I can't resist mentioning a childhood favourite, In desert and wilderness, an adventure story of a Polish teenage boy and an even younger English girl making their way alone through Africa in the late 19th century, after the anti-British rebellion in Sudan.

Lola,

thanks.

Have you read House of Day, House of Night? I think I will finish it this weekend. I would love to discuss it.

I will read and reread some Milosz, too.

Hi, polutropos! No, I haven't read that, I'd love to. It's rare for me to get hold of "fresh" books--either new works or new editions--that's what comes of having a to-be-read queue that's more or less chronological! IOW, look for me mostly sometime B.C.E. :)

Thanks agl1,
I've discovered Girl Nobody on my tbr.
Just have to find time to read it!!

(Ignore the touchstone - it links to the wrong book!)

My review of The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch

Jerzy Pilch is one of the most important contemporary Polish authors and journalists. The Mighty Angel was published in 2000, and won the NIKE Literary Award the following year. It was translated into English and published by Open Letter Books last month.

Jerzy was a moderately successful writer, until his life became consumed by alcoholism. He has been admitted to the alco ward of his local hospital 18 times. There he is detoxified and pumped full of vitamins and nutrients, under the care of the unstable Dr. Granada, and is given harsh therapy by Moses Alias I Alcohol ("if you do not quiet yourselves, I, alcohol, will destroy you"). However, each time he is released, he immediately goes to his favorite bar, The Mighty Angel, to see who is still there and what has happened since his internment, and he resumes his habit.

Jerzy writes about several characters who are also "frequent fliers" in the alco ward, which becomes their preferred residence. They give each other hilarious nicknames, such as The Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, the Hero of Socialist Labor, and Don Juan the Rib. Their stories are both funny and tragic, with hilarious experiences and lost love. However, their individual spirit and love of life, along with the group's support, allow each of them to go on.

This novel was very good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to, ergo the moderate rating.

>25 rebeccanyc:...

I always thought that Philip Roth's editing of the Writers from the Other Europe (Poles and Czechs) was a major contribution of translation and bringing to America an audience for unknown masters. In addition to his own writing career his role as editor and critic also add to his stature, deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Regarding Isaac Beshevis Singer, he of the Nobel Prize, his The Family Moskat is an epic family saga set in the Warsaw Ghetto.

I read The Family Moskat decades ago, as part of a course I took on Yiddish literature in translation, so needless to say I've forgotten most of it, but I know I enjoyed it. There is also The Family Carnovsky by his brother I. J. Singer.

This morning I got an e-mail about an exhibit by an artist painting his memories of Jewish life in Poland between the world wars.

I read Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli. Tulli is described as one of Poland’s leading writers; this book, her first, won the Koscielski award. Also of interest is the fact that Tulli is a psychologist and a translator – she’s translated the works of Calvino and Proust into Polish.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I could definitely see the influence of Calvino, especially Invisible Cities. Like that book, there’s not much in the way of plot or characterization – just wonderful descriptions. The overarching theme is the development of a city, from the initial plan to the gradual decline to the many ways that its inhabitants try to escape. In Invisible Cities, there were depictions of multiple different cities (which were actually all one and the same) which were both vividly descriptive and highly symbolic. Tulli’s city is described in a similar fashion – while the things she wrote could be taken literally, I was constantly thinking of the sentences as metaphors. Some comparisons I kept coming back to – organisms/cells and ideas – political, religious. The city itself is torn between two ideas: the city as a machine and the city as a tree. While initially it’s seen and treated as a machine – there is one perfect plan, everyone goes about their jobs like clockwork, everything’s regulated and ordered – eventually cracks start to show, though this was foreshadowed by the fact that the city had a countercity, which was pushed off to the side. This tension is also seen in the title, Dreams and Stones. Both are woven throughout the book. At first the Stone is the symbol of the city – the stone statues of workers, who outlast the real ones, are described during the city’s peak. Later on, it becomes a city of dreams, where everything is hazy, uncertain and constantly changing. In between, Tulli describes the decline of the city and various coping methods – travel, utter destruction, fencing in the whole area. The later stages of the city resembled Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Tulli even makes use of the terms invisible cities and sanatoriums) – people groping blindly in the darkness, the surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. This is a very short but dense and rewarding book. I don’t have the book with me right now, but I’ll probably go stick some quotes into the CK for the book – a lot of good ones

I am a native of Poland so it's exciting to see how much of Polish literature is being mentioned here.
If I were to recommend one author that must be read it would be Gustav Herling and his A World Apart. It is about gulags, where millions of Poles perished during WWII. This part of history is not very often mentioned or discussed as it happened parallel to Holocaust but it must be known. It sheds light on how oppressed Polish people were during this time, by both sides: the Nazis and the Soviets. Albert Camus said these words about the book: "Should be published and read in every country". The edition published by Penguin Books in 1996 also has a short but important preface written by Bertrand Russell.

Also there are two very important to world and Polish literature writers that should no tbe omitted: Stefan Zeromski and Wladyslaw Reymont.
Stefan Zeromski's most famous novels are The Labors of Sisyphus and The Spring To Come. I have to attach a link to the Wiki page since no records are coming up in Touchstone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_%C5%BBeromski

Wladyslaw Reymont was a Nobel Prize winner in Literature and his most famous work is The Peasants. Again, I am attaching the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladyslaw_Reymont

I read Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz which I've owned since the 70s, but have never read.

Per Wikipedia, "Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 – November 19, 1942) was a Polish writer, graphic artist and literary critic, who is widely regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born, and spent his entire life in Drohobycz (first Austro-Hungarian Empire, later Poland, Soviet Union, and Ukraine), in the province of Galicia, to assimilated Jewish parents. He was killed by a German Nazi officer."

It's difficult for me to know what to say about this book. Schulz's writing is often surreal and fantastical, and at the same time he very deeply observes the natural biological and meteorological world around him, and invests these elements with such power that the natural world almost is more of a character than the people. His writing is also very dense, almost claustrophobic in places, and he has a desolate view of the world. Nonetheless, I found some of the stories quite remarkable, including the title story, "Spring," "A Second Fall," and "Dead Season." My edition is also enlivened with sketches by the author to accompany some of the stories

I also read The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch. I wanted to read something by a contemporary Polish author and, as Darryl/kidzdoc points out above (#30), Pilch is one of the most well known contemporary writers in Poland, but little known outside Poland. I enjoyed the book, which is a satire about an alcoholic writer who's been in rehab 18 times, until about two-thirds of the way through when I started feeling I already got the idea, and I also found the ending a little puzzling. Pilch works in comments about the recent and not so recent history of Poland, mostly in a humorous way, and creates some memorable characters and stories. However, since Wikipedia describes the book as "a satirical take on the "drinking novel" genre," and I am completely unfamiliar with this genre, I think I probably missed a lot of the satire.

I loved House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk (beautifully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Reading it was like sipping brandy -- heady, dreamy, and deserving of slow savoring. The narrator, a contemporary young woman, is a new resident of the old village of Nowa Ruda (formerly Neurude) in the Silesian region of Poland. Over a period of a spring, summer and autumn, with the companionship of her neighbor, Marta, an ancient wigmaker with a deep connection to the natural world, she slowly unfolds the stories of the villagers, their history and their interconnectedness. It's a gorgeous meditation on nature and humanity that rather defies description -- as much poetry as fiction.

This is the first paragraph:

"The first night I had a dream. I dreamed I was pure sight, without a body or a name. I was suspended high above a valley at some undefined point from which I could see everything. I could move around my field of vision, yet remain in the same place. It seemed as if the world below was yielding to me as I look at it, constantly moving toward me, and then away so first I could see everything, then only tiny details."

It's absolutely the most evocative book I've read this year.

It looks like I'm the only person reading Girl Nobody, which is a shame as it's a bit weird and I'd like to discuss it with anyone who's read it.
Only 70 pages to go and I'm not readlly sure what to make of it.
It's about a young girl who moves from her small village home to a block of flats in town. I can relate to the problems her (fat) Mum has with small children and getting the shopping etc, but that's a small part of the story. It's the obsessive relationships that the 14 yr old girl has with the two close friends in the book that I find strange. Everything is so extreme. And there is a lot of hugging and stroking that I keep expecting to go furthur but doesn't (thankfully).
Interestingly one reviewer on Amazon UK said the full impact of the book doesn't hit you for a week or so......

If anyone is interested in swapping this for House of Day, House of Night or The Mighty Angel, just give me the nod.

Tadeusz Konwicki, the author of A Minor Apocalypse is a Polish writer and filmmaker. He was born in Vilnius, educated in Krakow and lives in Warsaw. He was a member of the communist Polish United Workers Party until the mid 1960s. Originally a strong advocate of social realism, his writing and films following his break with the party are described as increasingly bitter. A Minor Apocalypse, first published in 1979, is considered his best-known novel and is certainly the work of a man bitter about the fate of his country, his culture and the world's indifferent response. The author's film background is evident in both the attention paid to dissident filmmakers in the novel and the cinematic descriptions of fantastical places like the restaurant connected by crazy tunnels to a secret banquet hall. Konwicki continues to teach, write and make films in Warsaw today.

A Minor Apocalypse is a surreal tale of the last hours of a dissident writer in communist Warsaw. On the day of a major party Congress proclaiming the unity of the Polish and Russian people, the narrator, a writer known but not too well known, is approached by his friends and asked to set himself ablaze outside Congress Hall in a final act of rebellion against the state. Alone in the world, exhausted, and embittered, the protagonist reluctantly agrees and sets out to see to the details of his immolation. Along the way, in a series of increasingly dreamlike episodes, he falls in love, buys lighter fluid, befriends a young acolyte, locates good quality Swedish matches, attends a film screening, samples the delicacies awaiting a private Party-members-only banquet, is betrayed and more.

The text is interlaced with biting commentary on suppression of artistic expression, the hypocrisy of his fellow dissidents and the crushing burden of living in a totalitarian state. The narrator thinks brilliant thoughts but shares them with no one he encounters. His mute willingness to plod forward toward the fate his colleagues have selected for him begins to echo Christ's journey toward Golgotha. However, the narrator is far too cynical to believe that his sacrifice will make any difference at all. A tense narrative that leaves the reader guessing to the very end. Highly recommended for fans of political fantasy, surrealism and literature of the former Eastern Bloc. (4.5 stars)

Stefan Chwin is a Polish writer and professor of literature from Gdansk. He is a native of the city, born in 1949. Although he has authored numerous books (including children's books he illustrates himself), Death in Danzig appears to be his only book translated into English and was, I suspect, originally published under the name Hanneman. The book is filled with references to German and Polish art and literature and the lush descriptions of humble interiors attest to the author's eye for detail.

Death in Danzig tells the story of the changing fortunes of Lessingstrasse/Grottger street in Dansig/Gdansk at the end of World War II. The city and its surrounds, once part of the Hanseatic League, were declared a Free City under UN jurisdiction after World War I. Prior to that the area had passed between German, Prussian and Polish hands numerous times. At the beginning of World War II, Danzig was almost exclusively German. As the end of the war neared, Germans fled to the west and Poles fleeing the siege of Warsaw flooded in closely followed by the Russian army. This shifting balance of cultures sets the stage for the novel as old residents leave Lessingstrasse and new ones take their places on Grottger street.

The ever-changing cast of characters centers around the residents of house 17. An anatomy professor, haunted by the death of his lover when a ferry capsizes in the harbor, walks away from his job but is unable to tear himself from the city. Instead he takes refuge in German language and literature in the privacy of his rooms. A family fleeing Warsaw takes over the downstairs apartment and is soon joined by a Slavic housekeeper carrying her own secrets from places left unsaid and a mute boy taken in off the street. As the novel moves forward, flashbacks help the reader understand the complex emotions of the German Hanemann who alternately fixates on the grace of the human body, suicide, the beauty of art, the search for meaning in life, and the nature of communication. The narration of other chapters by the family's young son and his confusion about the many things he doesn't quite understand create a dreamlike elegy to a city that is slowly dying.

One of the most intriguing things about this book, even in translation, is the way names vacillate between German and Polish in the text. As the novel progresses, place names shift from German to Polish, Poles come to Hanemann hoping to learn to German and Hanemann himself finds refuge from the vagaries of language in the graceful and descriptive gestures of the sign language he uses to communicate with the mute boy. To manage to capture this aspect of the book while introducing a third language to the mix is surely the mark of a masterful translator, Philip Boehm. Highly recommended for those interested in exploring a lesser known aftermath of the war and those intrigued by the implications of changing place names. (4.5 stars)

tracyfox, These both sound fascinating, especially the second one. Thanks for such interesting reviews.

tracyfox -- Death in Danzig sounds fascinating, and I'm going to hunt it down. It seems that it has some tenuous ties to House of Day, House of Night especially with the shifts between German and Polish perspectives and language and the dream-like quality of daily existence.

I find the issue of naming and the language of naming to be particularly haunting -- Brian Friel's play Translations deals with this in the context of Ireland, as does Stephen Greenblatt's Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World in the context of the European conquest of the Americas. Naming has such ownership power.

This week's New Yorker has an article about Bruno Schulz by David Grossman. You can get to an abstract by following this link but you need to register for the site to read the whole article.

rebeccanyc and janeajones -
Thanks for your comments on my reviews. This was the first Polish literature I have read and it makes me excited to read more. I tried to find an inexpensive copy of House of Day, House of Night and didn't succeed but I will keep trying. I also plan to look for Marvelous Possessions. It should be a good counterpart to 1491, a book I am planning to read later this summer.

Hi,

I recently returned from a holiday in Poland and found this discussion. In Poland I read two of the novels mentioned above.

I found The Zookeepers Wife rather disappointing. The story is interesting enough, but I didn't like the way it was told. I found the writer was focussing too much on Antonina, the wife from the title, and on her intuitive nature. Other characters in the story, and the narrative itself, all had to bow to her apparently superior personality. Obviously Antonina did wonderful things during the war, but the story suffered from mentioning this, instead of just showing it through her actions.

On the other hand I absolutely loved Tales of Galicia. It is a book of stories, that at first seem unconnected. But after a few stories, the same characters reappear. After all, you can't tell a lot of stories about a small village, without the lives of the villagers interconnecting. The atmosphere of the stories is very special. They are a bit dreamy, with the style of writing reflecting the style of thinking of the main character. A wonderful example is the story about a guy telling a very long-winding story about a trip he made. The sentences have the same long and twisting nature as the story itself. My favorite story from the book was about "The Place" (I read it in Dutch, so not sure if the title is the same in English). This describes a clearing in the forest where an old wooden church used to be.

I began my choice for this discussion in April so that I would be ready to engage in discussion throughout May. And here, towards the end of June, is finally my contribution to the discussion. I have just finished the book and done some deliberation. I am now passing it on to two others, and then I trust we will have a full-fledged discussion, even though it may not be in May, but July or August.

Warning! Warning! Warning!
Some spoilers follow!

House of Day, House of Night
by Olga Tokarczuk

I so much wanted to like this book. It is from my part of the world. It is a best-seller in Poland and comes highly recommended as a delight, comic, tragic and wise. And yet…

It offers a kaleidoscopic view of life in a small Silesian village, intended no doubt as a microcosm of the world. Everyone and everything has a story. History is limitless and universal. The plot weaves over a large timescape. And that in fact is the problem. Some of the life-stories I found engaging. One of the opening ones is that of Marek Marek who in early childhood feels great pain and learns to cry without tears. Later, discovering alcohol, he finds that with its help everything inside, including all the pain, stops suddenly. He becomes convinced that he has a bird inside him, which increases his pain. So he has to drink. Eventually he attempts suicide, and finally succeeds. This episode with its elements of dark humour is affecting. Many others, though, are not. Neither the narrator, nor Marta, the other key figure, are particularly interesting, and neither are their stories. An incredibly long section dealing with Saint Kummernis, also known as Wilgefortis, is an excruciating piece of hagiography related very tangentially to plot or theme. The fabulous Agni episode thrusts the book squarely into the territory of magic realism, without any originality. We build to a final crescendo with “For some reason people have developed a liking for only one sort of transformation. They are fond of increase and development, but not decrease and disintegration. They prefer ripening to decay….People like what’s new and has never existed before. The new! The new!” The final image is of a man hoping to put all the pictures of the sky together like a jigsaw puzzle. In the end the book succeeds neither on a storytelling level, nor a thematic one.

Additionally, I had issues with some translation decisions. Most characters and places have, of course, Polish names. But we also have a character named Whatsisname and the Frost family. For the Polish speaker it is obviously significant that the name of the town, revealed at the beginning, is Nowa Ruda, meaning New Clearing. The non-speaker only finds out the name’s significance in the final pages.

A most disappointing book.

I read Nine by Andrzej Stasiuk, who also wrote Tales of Galicia. I’ll say upfront that I did not find this to be an enjoyable book. It was certainly interesting in a way, and it definitely shows that the author can write, but I never found it compelling. I’d consider reading another one of his books – this one might have been something of an experiment – but I’d have to browse it beforehand. There’s not much of a plot – various characters wandering around Warsaw – and all the characters are pretty much interchangeable, but I’ve liked other books that had minimal plot and character (mostly experimental-type lit).

The main problem was the flat and affectless prose and excessive random descriptions. Clearly, the author was trying to match his style to his numbed, indifferent characters, but it didn’t make for good reading. There are times when the matter-of-fact listing of action works well, as a contrast to the out-of-the-ordinary events. For example, in the opening scene, Pawel wakes up in a trashed apartment. The author describes him cleaning up and feeling slightly frustrated, but never alarmed or concerned. The scene immediately creates suspense – what did happen? – and establishes Pawel’s inert personality. However, much of the book reads as a list of things – Pawel got on the bus. A man crossed the street. There was a dog. At first, this style is interesting also, because the author will occasionally throw in a long, lyrical sentence, providing another sort of contrast. In addition, what he’s describing is often quite mundane or unpleasant (a woman relieving herself on the street, crowds in the subway). Still, there was just too much tediously described scenery. It’s possible that someone who had a good knowledge of Warsaw might find this interesting, especially since the author goes into detail about the bus routes and different areas of the city that the characters travel to – there might be something there that I missed (for example – if characters move to increasingly shoddy parts of town).

The characters are all like Pawel – unmoved by anything, never surprised when random people appear in their apartments, mostly discussing random things. There are some good parts where the author again portrays contrasts – Pawel and his friend Jacek talking past each other (Pawel trying to relate his predicament, while Jacek can only obsess about a missing gun) and some of the gangsters who are chasing them musing on minor things while they beat a man senseless. Again, though, the conversations could almost be from any of the characters – they all sound alike, and are only distinguished by their “jobs” – Pawel as a failed businessman on the run, Jacek an addict and the others criminals. When Jacek’s girlfriend Beata, a hippie, appears on the scene, it’s a bit of a shock because she has opinions and emotions – but then she quickly becomes uninteresting, just settling into the “girlfriend” role – going around with Jacek and doing what he says. I think the author was deliberately making his characters similar, since each new paragraph would be about a different character and he generally used “he” and “she” to describe them, so it could take a bit of time to figure out who was being described. However, this method didn’t make any of the characters interesting.

Also, for a book that was supposed to be showing the grim realism of present-day Warsaw, there were a number of rather fantastic coincidences – mostly characters randomly meeting each other on the street or being connected in a convenient fashion.

I didn't think it was a bad book, but I wouldn't recommend it.