A minor Apocalyose stars a narrator and character named Konwicki, who has been asked himself on fire that evening in front of the Comunist Party headquarters in Warsaw, in an act of protest. He accepts the commission, but without any clear idea of whether he actually go through with the self-immolation. He spends the rest of the day wandering the streets of Warsaw, being tortured by the secret police, and falling in love. 

Wydawnictwo: DALKEY

The four beautiful stories in The Birch Grove and Other Stories by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz are written in the language of dreams that have come true: wistful and full of gentle melancholy. They are set in the rolling hills and forests of an idyllic but reorganizable rural Europe, sometime between

Wydawnictwo: CEU PRESS

Warsaw under Russian rule in the late 1870s is the setting for Prus's grand panorama of social conflict, political tension, and personal suffering. The middle-aged hero, Wokulski, successful in business, is being destroyed by his obsessive love for a frigid society "doll," Izabela. Embattled aristocrats, the

Wydawnictwo: CEU PRESS

Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Andrzej Stasiuk, Poland’s most accomplished living prose writer, takes readers into the “forgotten Europe.” In this delightful collection of essays—by turns wry and reflective, wistful and witty—contemporary Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk turns his attention to the villages and small towns of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, and of course his native Poland. Stasiuk travels to places no tourist would think of visiting,

Wydawnictwo: DALKEY

Madame tells the story of a charmingly self-absorbed teenager as he pursues sexual and intellectual maturity—and the woman of his dreams—in Communist-dominated Warsaw of the early '70s. His French teacher, "Madame," is the object of both his affections and aspirations as news of the Cultural Revolution in the West seeps through the Communist walls. Libera paces his exuberant young hero's fulminations, fantasies, and discoveries beautifully, building a remarkably subtle ch

Wydawnictwo: CANONGATE

From philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, one of the giants of twentieth-century intellectual history, comes this highly influential study of Marxism. Written in exile, this "prophetic work" presents, according to the Library of Congress, "the most lucid and comprehensive history of the origins, structure, and posthumous development of the system of thought that had the greatest impact on the twentieth century". Kolakowski traces the intellectual foundations of Marxist thought from

Wydawnictwo: NORTON

Draws on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's collections of artifacts, photographs, maps, and taped oral and video histories to teach young people about this period of history.

Wydawnictwo: LITTLE BROWN

In 1964, renowned reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski was appointed by the Polish Press Agency as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries. He befriended Che Guevara in Bolivia, Salvador Allende in Chile and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. He reported on the fighting that broke out between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969 after their matches to determine which one of them would qualify for the 1970 World Cup. By the time, he returned to Poland

Wydawnictwo: GRANTA

The Polish Complex takes place on Christmas Eve, from early morning until late in the evening, as a line of people (including the narrator, whose name is Konwicki) stand and wait in front of a jewelry store in Warsaw. Through the narrator we are told of what happens among those standing in line outside this store, what happens as the narrator's mind thinks and rants about the current state of Poland, and what happens as he imagines the failed Polish rebellion of 1863.The novel's form allows Ko

Wydawnictwo: DALKEY

These milestones in modern theatre umequivocally demonstrate Gombrowicz's importance as a contributor to, and forerunner of, the Theatre of the Absurd. Gombrowicz draws on elements of darkly subversive fairy tales, dreams and witty parody to confronts themes of personal identity and the collapse of existing value systems.

Wydawnictwo: MARION BOYARS

Proud to be a Mammal (1942-97) is Czeslaw Milosz's moving and diverse collection of essays. Among them, he covers his passion for poetry, his love of the Polish language that was so nearly wiped out by the violence of the twentieth century, and his happy childhood. Milosz also includes a letter to his friend in which he voices his concern about the growing indifference to murder and the true value of freedom of thought, as well as a verbal

Wydawnictwo: PENGUIN BOOKS

Breslau in the 1920s is haunt of marquises and merchants, gamblers and gutter-rats. Eberhard Mock, the hardened Criminal Councillor, fits right in as he sways from the basements of grubby casinos to his beautiful young wife in their palatial mansion. But his beautiful young wife is feeling neglected. A series of sinister murders linked by the dates of past crimes has taken Mock out of the bedroom and into the archives. While Mock ransacks the city for clues, driven mad by the killer's tantalizi

Wydawnictwo: QUERCUS

Czeslaw Miosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, reflects upon poetry's testimony to the events of our tumultuous time. From the special perspectives of "my corner of Europe," a classical and Catholic education, a serious encounter with Marxism, and a life marked by journeys and exiles, Milosz has developed a sensibility at once warm and detached, flooded with specific memory yet never hermetic or provincial. Milosz addresses many of the major problems of contemporary po

Wydawnictwo: HARVARD

The best work of one of Poland's greatest younger poets

Wydawnictwo: FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX

In the late 1980s a group of young men in their early thirties leave Warsaw for a few days in the mountains, partly out of boredom, partly for an adventure. Their plans go wrong when they get lost, argue, and finally, accidentally, kill a border guard. Flight is now their only option...extreme flight through a totally inhospitable snowscape.

Wydawnictwo: SERPENT'S TAIL

An audacious, fresh portrait of marginalized, fatalistic post- Communist youth. Andrzej 'Nails' Robakoski is a tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time doing nothing other than searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the national economy.

Wydawnictwo: ATLANTIC BOOKS

Published in Poland after World War II, Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories show atrocious crimes becoming an unremarkable part of a daily routine. Prisoners eat, work, sleep and fall in love a few yards from where other prisoners are systematically slaughtered.

Wydawnictwo: PENGUIN BOOKS

Piotr Sommer's poetry is low-key and terse; to adapt one of his phrases, it wants to say nothing it doesn't need to. Irony there is, but it keeps its head down, while the occasional uncertain joke raises an uncertain smile. Obliquity is the rule. An old dog entertains metaphysical thoughts, and in its own way expresses an opinion. Or a knock on the door announces a milkwoman, not the secret police, but the one caller mirrors the other.

Wydawnictwo: BLOODAXE BOOKS

Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, this extraordinary work is a remarkable record — in both words and images — of Jewish life in a Polish town before World War II as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy. Mayer Kirshenblatt, who was born in 1916 and left Poland for Canada in 1934, taught himself to paint at age 73. Since then, he has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, lest future generations know more about how Jews died than

Wydawnictwo: CALIFORNIA PRES