The Graveyard
The Graveyard
- ISBN 13:
9781612192949
- ISBN 10:
1612192947
- Format: Paperback
- Copyright: 12/03/2013
- Publisher: Melville House
New From $15.39
Sorry, this item is currently unavailable.
List Price $15.95 Save $0.56
New
$15.39
Usually Ships in 3-5 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Included with your book
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
“History has no use for witnesses.”
When Marek Hłasko 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 Hłasko’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 Hłasko’s meteoric career, The Graveyard set its author and the Polish Communist government implacably against each other, and it’s easy to see why: Hłasko 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.
When Marek Hłasko 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 Hłasko’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 Hłasko’s meteoric career, The Graveyard set its author and the Polish Communist government implacably against each other, and it’s easy to see why: Hłasko 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.