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The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman
A European contemporary classic full of poetry and subtle humour, and at the same time a socio-political work.
The winner of the ›Wiadnomości Literackie‹ Award 1988, now complemented with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of 1943, Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow, possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: she has blue eyes and blond hair. With these, and a set of false papers, she has slipped out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma's arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw's Jews are about to meet their death in the burning ghetto.
»The authorial voice here – now gentle, now sardonic, but always piercingly omniscient – takes unique advantage of its eighties' perspective to create an unforgettable group portrait.«
»His novel is a masterful accomplishment, written with the kind of suspense that makes it impossible to put down. All this is achieved with what seems like effortless elegance, poetry and the muted echo of an almost Romantic irony.«
»A masterpiece of modern prose which grips the reader with the power of a high-class thriller.«
»Szczypiorski recounts the eternal calvary of a Poland drunk with independence, but always enslaved and always crushed, in a sparse language as classical as that of Thomas Mann. Superb and staggering!«
»Magnificent. Complex, wise, unsentimental and very moving«
»Dense, lyrical and deeply unsettling.«
»A fine balance between poetic tenderness and an unflinching account of the brutal realities of the day.«