Fiction of Tadeusz Konwicki

Author: 
Year:
Pages:316
ISBN:0-7734-5466-7
978-0-7734-5466-8
Price:$219.95 + shipping
(Click the PayPal button to buy)
This book examines, for the first time in English, the literary work of Tadeusz Konwicki, one of the most popular and widely translated twentieth-century Polish writers whose prose reflects post-war Polish history, politics, and Sovietisation. In portraying the impact of these changes on people in general and on the intelligentsia in particular, Konwicki recreated the complex Polish-Jewish-Belorussian-Lithuanian world that disappeared by 1945 but survived in the collective memory of the Polish people. Despite Konwicki’s wide-ranging topics and literary styles, the monograph has competently knitted these together around the question of living in the post-Holocaust world by: analysing the political and cultural themes of Konwicki’s fiction; examining Konwicki’s prose, along with some of his films, which have brought him international renown; engaging an impressive number of other critical works about Konwicki; and by explaining the political and social context in which Konwicki’s fiction appeared.

Reviews

“The great merit of Katarzyna Zechenter’s monograph lies in its knitting together of the multifarious strands of Konwicki’s work . . . Dr. Zechenter’s monograph finally fills a major gap in English-language studies of recent Polish literature.” – (from the Preface) Dr. John Bates, Lecturer in Polish Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow

“It may seem paradoxical that until now no monograph has appeared in English on the work of Tadeusz Konwicki, the novelist, author of screenplays and a film director who was honoured at the international film festivals at Venice, Mannheim, Edinburgh and San Remo . . . The present work by Dr. Katarzyna Zechenter fills this gap. - (from the Foreword) Professor Dr. Hab. Malgorzata Czermi?ska, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Uniwersytet Gda?ski

“Dr. Zechenter describes, interprets, and places Konwicki’s work in the context of contemporary Polish Prose . . . Dr. Zechenter presents her findings and interpretations in a very convincing and stylish manner. Her work is clear and most readable.” – Jadwiga Maurer, Professor Emerita, University of Kansas

Table of Contents

Preface by Dr. John Bates
Foreword by Professor Dr. Hab. Malgorzata Czermi?ska
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Konwicki Settling Accounts with Romanticism
Chapter 3 Socialist Realism by the Priest and the Jester
Chapter 4 Searching for the Past and the Home
Chapter 5 The Political Novels of the Late 1970s
Chapter 6 Konwicki’s Autobiographical Works Bibliography
Index

Other Slavic Studies Books