Kontra - Couverture rigide

Mackiewicz, Jozef

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0907652646 ISBN 13 : 9780907652649

Editeur : Kontra, 2009

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur :

Polish novelist and publicist, born in St Petersburg on 1st April 1902. He emerges from "The History of Polish Literature" by Czeslaw Milosz as a great contemporary Polish writer. After fighting as a Polish volunteer in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 and studying at Warsaw University, he worked in Wilno (a Polish city 1920-1939, now Vilnius) as a journalist until the Red Army drove him west in 1945. Thereafter he lived briefly in Rome, then in London, and finally in Munich where he died on 31st January 1985. In the autumn of 1939, Wilno found itself in independent Lithuania; in June 1940 it was annexed with all of Lithuania in the USSR; and a year later it was under Nazi occupation. So Mackiewicz had to resist, in quick succession, the varying types of threat posed by Lithuanian nationalism, Soviet communism and National Socialism. He refused all inducements from the communists and the Nazis to compromise his beliefs. For five years he scratched an existence as a wood cutter. These experiences provided Mackiewicz with rich material for his semi-documentary historical novels. His "Road to Nowhere" (Harvill Press, 1963) is, to quote Milosz, "a powerful, traditionally realistic novel on a most untraditional subject: life in Lithuania as it was being converted into a republic of the Soviet Union". A sequel, "Nie trzeba glosno mowic" (Don't talk Out Loud) presents a panorama of the Nazi occupation, and the maze of underground resistance networks, in which those linked to London and those under Moscow's control oppose each other as much as they fight the Germans. His analytical work "Zwyciestwo prowokacji" (The Triumph of Provocation) sees the West succumbing to the communist advance because it mistakenly considers communism a Russian phenomenon. Mackiewicz was the first author to write books about two chilling episodes of World War II: "The Katyn Wood Murders" (Hollis and Carter, 1951) and his novel "Kontra" (1957) which describes the Allies' handing over of Cossack troops to Stalin after the war. His forthright views were often confirmed by subsequent events, and today he sounds remarkably contemporary.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Kontra jest utworem, po którego przeczytaniu obcy czytelnik nie domyslilby sie, ze autorem jest Polak. Michal K. Pawlikowski, Wiadomosci, Londyn, 6 pazdziernika 1957 Po czym p. Pawlikowski wyrokuje, ze ja jestem pisarzem "bardzo polskim", a Mackiewicz... "ogólnoludzkim". ... Mackiewicz jest - oczywiscie - rdzennie, do szpiku kosci polsko-kresowym artysta... ale to - rzecz jasna - w niczym nie przeszkadza jego "ogólnoludzkosci"... gdyz sztuka jest (jak z dawna i dobrze wiadomo) wyniesieniem prywatnej, poszczególnej, lokalnej, nawet zasciankowej konkretnosci do wyzyn wszech... do wymiaru kosmicznego... Witold Gombrowicz, Dziennik 1957-1961 Kontre przeczytalem przed trzema laty. Co prawda pózno, ale mimo wychowania w kulcie epopei napoleonskiej ("O roku ów", ulany bijace pod Somosierra itd.) doszedlem do wniosku, ze polskie legiony za Napoleona, zwlaszcza San Domingo, Hiszpania, to polska wersja wlasowców z ich tragicznym koncem. Musieli ginac, wracac w 1815 roku pod rozkazy nowego naczelnego dowódcy w osobie cara - niepewnosc, strach, liczne wypadki samobójstw. A mój, jak mi sie zdawalo, odkrywczy wniosek kto gorszy, ze Niemcy zagrazali fizyczna zaglada, a Sowieci czyms gorszym, bo psychicznym zgnojeniem. To wszystko znalazlem w Pana ksiazkach, podane w przepieknej, wstrzasajacej formie. Czytelnik z Polski

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Kontra
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0907652646
• ISBN 13: 9780907652649
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 4
• Nombre de pages: 296