Read Your Way Around the World - Polish fiction in translation

Phantoms of Breslau: an Eberhard Mock investigation by Marek Krajewski.

"Breslau, 1919: The hideously battered, naked bodies of four sailors are discovered on an island in the River Oder. When Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock, back from the war, arrives at the scene to investigate, he finds an enigmatic note addressed to him insisting that he admit to past mistakes and become a believer. As he endeavors to piece together the elements of the brutal crime, Mock combs the brothels and drinking dens of the then still-German city of Breslau and is drawn into an insidious game: it seems that anyone he questions during the course of the investigation is destined to become the next victim. Meanwhile, Mock uncovers a secret society that has the Criminal Assistant himself clearly in its sights. Dark, sophisticated, and uncompromising, the distinctive Breslau series has already received broad critical acclaim. Phantoms of Breslau confirms Eberhard Mock as one of the most outrageous and original detectives in crime fiction." publisher

The Property by Rutu Modan

"Rutu Modan's second full-length graphic novel is a triumph of storytelling and fine lines. After the death of her son, Regina Segal takes her granddaughter Mica to Warsaw, hoping to reclaim a family property lost during the Second World War. As they get to know modern Warsaw, Regina is forced to recall difficult things about her past, and Mica begins to wonder if maybe their reasons for coming aren't a little different than what her grandmother led her to believe. Modan offers up a world populated by prickly seniors, smart-alecky public servants, and stubborn women--a world whose realism is expressed alternately in the absurdity of people's behavior and in the complex consequences of their sacrifices. Rutu Modan was born in Israel in 1966. She lives in Tel Aviv." Discover

A Grain of Truth by Zysmunt Miloszewski

"It is spring 2009, and prosecutor Szacki is no longer working in Warsaw—he has said goodbye to his family and to his career in the capital and moved to Sandomierz, a picturesque town full of churches and museums. Hoping to start a "brave new life," Szacki instead finds himself investigating a strange murder case in surroundings both alien and unfriendly.The victim is found brutally murdered, her body drained of blood. The killing bears the hallmarks of legendary Jewish ritual slaughter, prompting a wave of anti-Semitic paranoia in the town, where everyone knows everyone. The murdered woman's husband is bereft, but when Szacki discovers that she had a lover, the husband becomes the prime suspect. Before there's time to arrest him, he is found murdered in similar circumstances. In his investigation Szacki must wrestle with the painful tangle of Polish–Jewish relations and something that happened more than sixty years earlier." publisher


The Doll by Boleslaw Prus

"At the center of the book are three men from three different generations. Prus’s fatally flawed hero is Wokulski, a successful businessman who yearns for recognition from Poland’s decadent aristocracy and falls desperately in love with the highborn, glacially beautiful Izabela. Wokulski’s story is intertwined with those of the incorrigibly romantic old clerk Rzecki, nostalgic for the revolutions of 1848, and of the bright young scientist Ochocki, who dreams of a future full of flying machines and other marvels, making for a book of great scope and richness that is, as Stanisław Barańczak writes in his introduction, at once “an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story . . . , a still topical diagnosis of society’s ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man." publisher



Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz

"The place is Poland, in the early years of the German occupation. Pornografia's narrator, an author named Witold Gombrowicz, meets a swarthy and overly formal man named Fyderyk at a Warsaw house party, and the two soon become engaged in a business of a dubious (if not downright criminal) nature. When an acquaintance of theirs, a corpulent provincial landowner named Hipolit, requests that they come stay with him to discuss some of his city affairs, it is not hard to convince them to leave the claustrophobic city for the fresh air of the countryside. Once in the country, however, Fryderyk and Witold quickly bore of their surroundings -- all of their surroundings, that is, but the two teenagers who are staying on Hipolit's farm: Henia, Hipolit's daughter; and Karol, the son of one of the farmhands, who has just returned from a stint in the Polish resistance movement." publisher