num_pages: 143
description: A comic gem Jerzy Pilchs A Thousand Peaceful Cities takes place in 1963 in the latter days of the Polish post-Stalinist thaw. The narrator Jerzyk (little Jerzy) is a teenager who is keenly interested in his father a retired postal administrator and his fathers closest friend Mr. Trba a failed Lutheran clergyman alcoholic would-be Polish insurrectionist and one of the wildest literary characters since Sternes Uncle Toby. One drunken afternoon Mr. Trba and the narrators nameless father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity: travel to distant Warsaw and assassinate the de facto Polish head of state First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party Wadysaw Gomukaassassinating Mao Tse-tung after all would be impractical. And they decide to involve Jerzyk in their scheme . . .
language: English
title: A Thousand Peaceful Cities
publisher: Open Letter