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Polish Memories
Although Witold Gombrowicz’s unique, idiosyncratic writings include a three-volume Diary, this voluminous document offers few facts about his early life in Poland before his books were banned there and he went into voluntary exile. Polish Memories—a series of autobiographical sketches Gombrowicz composed for Radio Free Europe during his years in Argentina in the late 1950s—fills the gap in our knowledge. Written in a straightforward way without his famous linguistic inventions, the book presents an engaging account of Gombrowicz’s childhood, youth, literary beginnings, and fellow writers in interwar Poland and reveals how these experiences and individuals shaped his seemingly outlandish concepts about the self, culture, art, and society. In addition, the book helps readers understand the numerous autobiographical allusions in his fiction and brings a new level of understanding and appreciation to his life and work.
In the Heart of Warsaw
Continues the author's autobiographical tale begun in his When paupers dance.
The Autobiographical Triangle
The book presents a universal theory of autobiography which has a "triangular" model. Three stances: witness, confession and challenge to the reader, are always present, though usually one is dominant. Polish autobiographical writing is seen in relation to European autobiographies and against the background of history.
The Subtenant ; To Outwit God
This volume presents two works by acclaimed Polish journalist Hanna Krall: The Subtenant, a semi-autobiographical novel, and To Outwit God, a remarkable interview with Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Subtenant explores the troubled and ever-shifting relationships between Poles and Jews, beginning with the author's concealment as a child during the Nazi years and ending in 1981 when martial law was declared in Poland. In To Outwit God, Edelman's words assault conventional assumptions about heroes and heroism, taking in his time not only in the Warsaw Ghetto but his careers as a physician and a Solidarity activist. Taken together, the two works form a powerful memoir of Jewish survival, a meditation on Polish-Jewish relations, and a commentary on the forces that have produced modern Polish opposition movements.
Between Mexico and Poland
Reissue of an autobiographical account of a writer's journeys to Mexico, New York and Poland. First published 2002. Relates her experiences in Mexico as she tries to write a novel, the devastation of losing her New York home, and researching a novel in Poland. Author was born in Germany and emigrated to Melbourne in 1948. Her first book, 'The Auschwitz Poems', won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for Poetry, and 'Just Like That' received the 1995 NSW Premier Awards for Fiction. She currently lives in New York with her husband, Australian painter David Rankin.
Swallowing Mercury
Wiola lives in a close-knit agricultural community. Wiola has a black cat called Blackie. Wiola's father was a deserter but now he is a taxidermist. Wiola's mother tells her that killing spiders brings on storms. Wiola must never enter the seamstress's 'secret' room. Wiola collects matchbox labels. Wiola is a good Catholic girl brought up with fables and nurtured on superstition. Wiola lives in a Poland that is both very recent and lost in time. Swallowing Mercury is about the ordinary passing of years filled with extraordinary days. In vivid prose filled with texture, colour and sound, it describes the adult world encroaching on the child's. From childhood to adolescence, Wiola dances to the strange music of her own imagination.
Come Spring
'I wasn't happy. I wasn't unhappy. I was there at that time and that was all. I didn't involve myself in philosophical reflections, but my mind was like a camera, imprinting forever the idyllic beauty of the European summer of 1939.' The idyll does not last long. Within days a young Jewish girl and her family are engulfed by the Second World War in Warsaw, Poland. Outside the concentration camps and mostly outside the ghetto, the adolescent heroine and her family experience the war with a secret. Living in a country house, they survive on false papers and 'good looks', while hiding four of their close relatives in the cellar. One day they have to cope with waves of German soldiers bursting through their houses; the next moment the Warsaw ghetto burns; another day they wake to find the front line in their front garden. The author recreates this inhuman world though the eyes of her adolescent self. There are moments of poetic vision and moments of searing pain, but the book is a testament to heroism and concern.
