Synopses & Reviews
Tadeusz Borowski was a talented young poet when he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He emerged at the end of the Second World War to become one of the most influential writer-witnesses to the Nazi concentration camp system. This book offers the first authoritative translation of Borowskis prose fiction, including numerous stories that have never appeared in English before. These are the chilling writings of a man who has experienced horrifying brutality and sees no possibility for human redemption.
Review
“Tadeusz Borowski joins the company of such artists as Elie Wiesel and André Schwarz-Bart. Like them, he paints a picture of the horror and madness that ruled the concentration camps, so brilliantly that the immediacy of the experience is almost too much to bear.”—
New York Times Book ReviewSynopsis
The most complete English-language collection of the prose of Tadeusz Borowski--the most challenging chronicler of Auschwitz--featuring a foreword by Timothy Snyder In 1943, the twenty-year-old Polish poet and journalist Tadeusz Borowski was arrested and deported to Auschwitz as a political prisoner. What he experienced in the camp left him convinced that no one who survived Auschwitz was innocent.
All were complicit; the camp regime depended on this. Borowski's tales present the horrors of the camp as reflections of basic human nature and impulse, stripped of the artificial boundaries of culture and custom. Inside the camp, the strongest of the prisoners form uneasy alliances with their captors and one another, watching unflinchingly as the weak scrabble and struggle against their inevitable fate. In the last analysis, suffering is never ennobling and goodness is tantamount to suicide.
Bringing together for the first time in English Borowski's major writings and many previously uncollected works, this is the most complete collection of stories in a new, authoritative translation, with a substantial foreword by Timothy Snyder that speaks to its enduring relevance.
Synopsis
The most complete English-language collection of the prose of Tadeusz Borowski, the most challenging chronicler of Auschwitz, with a foreword by Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny "Borowski's sharp-edged descriptions of life in Nazi concentration camps shatter the limits of even Kafka's most surreal imaginings . . . conducting a conversation with darkness . . . in an icy style that cloaks hot rage."--Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal
In 1943, the twenty-year-old Polish poet Tadeusz Borowski was arrested and deported to Auschwitz as a political prisoner. What he experienced in the camp left him convinced that no one who survived Auschwitz was innocent.
All were complicit; the camp regime depended on this. Borowski's tales present the horrors of the camp as reflections of basic human nature and impulse, stripped of the artificial boundaries of culture and custom. Inside the camp, the strongest of the prisoners form uneasy alliances with their captors and one another, watching unflinchingly as the weak scrabble and struggle against their inevitable fate. In the last analysis, suffering is never ennobling and goodness is tantamount to suicide.
Bringing together for the first time in English Borowski's major writings and many previously uncollected works, this is the most complete collection of stories in a new, authoritative translation, with a substantial foreword by Timothy Snyder that speaks to its enduring relevance.
About the Author
Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951), a Polish poet, short story writer, and journalist, was arrested as a political prisoner and deported to German concentration camps. He survived, but a few years later committed suicide at the age of 29. Madeline G. Levine is Kenan Professor of Slavic Literatures Emerita, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.