The Faithful River (European Classics)
THE FAITHFUL RIVER ( $16.95 paperback original; Aug.; 216 pp.; 0-8101-1596-4). The first US edition of a famous Polish novel, originally published in 1912, which vividly portrays an inchoate country's uprising (186364) against its Russian oppressors. The setting is a manor temporarily abandoned by its wealthy owners, whose beautiful ward (Salomea) protects and nurses back to health a severely wounded Polish soldier (who is himself an aristocrat). The accidental intertwining of their destinies, and their inevitable separation, are delineated with almost operatic intensity in an impressively dramatic (if more than occasionally grandiose) symbolic exploration of the ambiguities of both political allegiance and internecine class distinction. Zeromski (18641925), who seems a strange combination of passionate nationalist reformer and Dostoevskian mystic, looks like a writer very much worth reviving.  --Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.