The Elephant
by Sławomir Mrożek
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Description
The Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek's award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, show more officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I loved Kafka, but this is almost better in a lot of regards. Each story works on its own, but taken together each morsel adds up to a sumptuous meal. To think - I've been in Poland all these years, yet this is the first time I've been exposed to Mrozek. That doesn't put me in a very good light, but at least now my oversight has been somewhat rectified.
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NOVELAS Y RELATOS DE HUMOR
60 works; 1 member
Author Information
164+ Works 1,127 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Elephant
- Original title
- Słoń
- Alternate titles
- The Elephant A mordant satire on totalitarianism
- Original publication date
- 1957; Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1958
- First words*
- Weil es halt in unserem gottverlassenen Dorf an Aufklärung fehlt, steckt alles voller Aberglaube.
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Hinter mir brach die Barrikade zusammen.
- Original language
- Polish
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 891.8537 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages East Indo-European and Celtic literatures West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian) Polish Polish fiction 1919–1989
- LCC
- PG7172 .R65 .A27 — Language and Literature Slavic languages and literatures. Baltic languages. Albanian language Slavic. Baltic. Albanian Slavic Polish
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 255
- Popularity
- 127,422
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.84)
- Languages
- 9 — Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 9
