It’s a good thing I’m not a proper book reviewer, editor, or proof reader or anything. I would be unbearable. Reading Reisefieber by Miko?aj ?ozi?ski, for instance, I keep running into annoying lapses. Who the hell cares if the narrator (when working as a journalist) takes his lunch break at two in the afternoon? I […]
Judging by word of mouth (and not the increasingly obviously phoney bestseller lists bookshops put up by the door to clear out old stock), Leopold Tyrmand’s Z?y (Bad) is the most popular Polish book I know of. Everyone loves this story of a superhero in the grey days of Polish communism. It’s a good few […]
Western readers will notice something peculiar about the stern and impressive Stefan Chwin’s latest novel and other works of fiction from this part of the world: the unashamed name dropping. I mean brand names. starannie ogolony i spryskany O… S… carefully shaven and sprayed in O… S… W supermarkecie A… In A… supermarket niczym dostawca […]
I blame Bia?oszewski. For the short sentences. In fact, fragmentary. Sentences, that is. Very annoying. He wrote a book once. Famous. Pami?tnik z powstania warszawskiego. It was called. Miron Bia?oszewski wrote short, abrupt sentences in a sometimes successful attempt to capture and reflect the urgency and chaos of Warsaw during the uprising. Polish lends itself […]
The following is a first draft of a translation of an episode from Bruno Jasie?ski’s novel Pal? Pary? (I Burn Paris – the title arose from a misunderstanding on Jasie?ski’s part of the French idiom). In the novel, Paris is cordoned off after being hit by a plague and ascends into anarchy. There are different […]
The current Polityka carries a review of “Bored in Brno,” a film directed by Vladim�r Mor�vek, which “sends up the myth of Czech sexual potency.” I’ve been to Czecho (yes, yes, I have it on good authority that the name of the country is now “Czecho”) a few times but had never come across this […]
“He left the office and submerged himself in the crowds on Kampmannsgade, heading west across the Jorgen So and on to Danasvej. He turned right on Vodroffsvej before taking a left and winding up on Sankt Markus Plads where he bought a newspaper at a kiosk near the church. He continued up Julius Thomsens Plads, […]
On the evidence of the almost readable Sons and Lovers, David Herbert Lawrence is a truly dreadful writer. You could argue that his constant contradictions and endless revisions are an attempt to capture the complexity of the subconscious or you could argue that he did not know what he was on about and never re-read […]
Tadeusz Konwicki (80 years old today), author of Mala Apokalypsa (Minor Apocalypse, translated by Richard Lourie), is a very good writer indeed, on a par with DH Lawrence. Set during the war, Kilka dni wojny, o ktorej nie wiadomo czy byla (literally: A Few Days in a War About Which it is not Known if […]
As a westerner, it’s hard not to feel cheated sometimes when a book goes Eastern European, as does Sandor Marai’s A gyerty�k csonkig �gnek (Embers). The deep, abstruse contemplation on the Nature of Things is in full swing. You are following. It’s difficult but somehow, with the help of your abundantly stocked classics library, you […]
