Synopses & Reviews
An exquisitely original collection of darkly funny stories that explore the panorama of Jewish experience in contemporary Poland, from a world-class contemporary writer
Mikolaj Grynberg is a psychologist and photographer who has been collecting and publishing oral histories of Polish Jews. In his first work of fiction — a book that has been widely praised by critics and was shortlisted for Poland's top literary prize — Grynberg recrafts those histories into little jewels, fictionalized short stories with the ring of truth.
Both biting and knowing, I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One to Say Sorry To takes the form of first-person vignettes, through which Grynberg explores the daily lives and tensions within Poland between Jews and gentiles haunted by the Holocaust and its continuing presence.
In "Unnecessary Trouble," a grandmother discloses on her deathbed that she is Jewish; she does not want to die without her family knowing. What was passed on to the family was fear and the struggle of what to do with this information. In "Rejwach," Jewish identity is explored through names, as Miron and his son Jurek demonstrate how heritage is both accepted and denied. In "My Five Jews," a non-Jewish narrator remembers his five interactions with his Jewish countrymen, and his own anti-Semitism, ruefully noting that perhaps he was wrong and should apologize, but no one is left to say I'm sorry to.
Each story — a dazzling and haunting mini-monologue — highlights a different facet of modern Poland's complex and difficult relationship with its Jewish past.
Review
"Wrenching, astonishing, surprisingly humorous....Polish photographer/psychologist Mikolaj Grynberg alchemizes his documentary nonfiction into a superb collection of 31 short stories poignantly revealing the Polish Jewish experience." Shelf Awareness
Review
"Mikolaj Grynberg's characters yearn for connection, though the relationships with their family, their people, and their country, are fraught. One of the most brutal of Grynberg's vignettes describes the casual inherited anti-Semitism of children. But what becomes of these children when their parents, late in life, reveal that they are Jewish? How do they make sense of who they are and where they belong in the world? An absolutely gripping, emotionally exhausting book. Highly recommended." Goldie Goldbloom, author of On Division
Review
"The incredible vividness of these monologues, the realism, the sadness and the black humor, all combine into an enthralling, multi-faceted story of Jewish and Polish fate....I'll come back to this book, and I'm sorry I can't take any of these stories as fiction. All of it is true. Unfortunately." Wojciech Szot, Zdaniem Szota
Review
"It is with a lump in my throat that I read these luminous cameos. Such a range of voices, often revealing for the first time what had been hidden for a lifetime. In Grynberg, psychologist and artist by equal measure, they have found a vessel into which they can pour their hearts. With exquisite clarity, his spare prose lays bare the conundrums with which they have lived and died — as Jews in postwar Poland." Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
About the Author
Mikolaj Grynberg is a photographer, author, and trained psychologist. He has published three collections: Survivors of the 20th Century, I Accuse Auschwitz, and The Book of Exodus. I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One to Say Sorry To (The New Press), his first work of fiction, was a finalist for the Nike, Poland's top literary prize. He lives in Poland.