Volume 54, Number 15 · October 11, 2007
Warsaw Underground
By Eva Hoffman
Nine
by Andrzej Stasiuk,translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston
Harcourt, 229 pp., $23.00
The name of Andrzej Stasiuk is unlikely to be known to most American readers, but in his native Poland, he is something of a literary celebrity. His work is widely read, critically praised, and regularly awarded prizes. To many of his contemporaries, he seems to embody a distinctively Polish style of nonconformist authenticity. He is also part of a lively and diverse literary landscape that has emerged in Poland during the last two decades. Despite some predictions to the contrary, it is safe to say that the lifting of censorship nearly twenty years ago has been good for Polish letters. Released from the constraints of covertness and the duty of high-minded dissidence, writers are experimenting with a variety of hitherto suppressed genres and formal possibilities. They are addressing a range of subjects that were previously taboo or pushed to the margins of collective memory.
Review, 2418 words
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