The graveyard
By: Marek Hłasko ; translated by Norbert Guterman ; introduction by James Sallis
Contributors: Guterman, Norbert, 1900-1984, translator
Series: The Neversink library; Neversink library
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 140
ISBN-13: 9781612192949
Subjects: Politics and government; Fiction
Work titles: Cmentarze
Description: ""A spokesman for those who were angry and beat, turbulent, temperamental and tortured... In The Graveyard, Hlasko stabs his knife into the regime and draws it out dripping blood." --The New York Times "Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull." --The Washington Post When Marek ;asko sent this novel to publishers in Poland in the mid-1950s, it was uniformly rejected. When he asked why, he was told: "This Poland doesn't exist." Long out of print, The Graveyard is ;asko's portrait of a system built on such denial and willful blindness. Factory worker Franciszek Kowalski is on his way home one evening after drinking with an old friend from the People's Army when he unthinkingly yells some insults at a policeman. His outburst is taken as criticism of the government, and he is arrested and then expelled from the Party. Kowalski attempts to rehabilitate himself by gathering testimonies from the men he had fought alongside, but each meeting with his former comrades takes him further into the underworld that he realizes has been there all along. Written midway through ;Hlasko's meteoric career, The Graveyard set its author and the Polish Communist government implacably against each other, and it's easy to see why: asko pulls no punches in portraying a regime that is maintained by constant surveillance, intimidation, and profound psychological manipulation. A classic novel of political disillusionment from one of Poland's seminal writers, an original "Angry Young Man" who lived fast, died young, and wrote brilliantly"--
Notes: Translation from the Polish of: Cmentarze.