A Warsaw Chronicle

(Paperback)

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Carol Hebald's novel, A Warsaw Chronicle, depicts the moving portrait of Karolina Heybald, an American exchange professor at Warsaw University during the 1981 advent of martial law. Underlying the conflict between the Communist regime and Solidarity's struggle against it looms the threat of a Soviet invasion. In the midst of food scarcity and turbulent political upheaval, Karolina's attempts to locate a missing first cousin entangle her in the fate of her brilliantly gifted student, Marek, the son of a duplicitous Communist official. Torn by conflicting loyalties--a poet in service to his conscience, a soldier under orders to the state--Marek's only hope lies in Karolina's valiant efforts to secure his fellowship at her home university.

Reviews

"A Warsaw Chronicle is a powerful and moving story set against the backdrop of martial-law Poland (1981-82), one of the most dramatic periods of twentieth-century European history." Michael Mandelbaum, author of Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era "Carol Hebald's A Warsaw Chronicle is a wonderful book that evokes the deceptive and dangerous atmosphere of Warsaw under the communist regime. Among her students, the eponymous professor Karolina Heybald recognizes and is drawn to a budding young male poet whose gifts, she hopes, will flourish with a fellowship to the States. But around the young man, the jealousy and scheming is thick and ominous-and darkly fascinating." Rosa Shand, author of The Gravity of Sunlight "This fine novel shook me and taught me. The complexity of the shift to martial law and the resistance of the Solidarity movement to that change in Poland is depicted in quick, effective brushstrokes. I felt for Karolina, a visiting professor of literature from the United States who becomes involved in situations way beyond her experience. She's sophisticated about the literature she teaches, but naive about Realpolitik, tension that makes her the perfect fulcrum between the student Marek and his father Adam, a Communist official, who represent different aspects of the conflict. When Karolina's innocent search for her father's Jewish past unearths a secret never meant to be revealed, she comes into danger, bringing to life the idea that the personal is political." Alice Elliott Dark, author of In the Gloaming and Think of England "Carol Hebald is a masterful writer, her prose consistently intelligent, probing, and, withal, beautiful. Karolina, an American professor visiting at Warsaw University, must deal with spies, lies, missing letters, and her own ambivalence. The main characters, vividly rendered, form a most unusual triangle, their voices and views so clear and distinct they could be in a play-or real life. Hebald has produced a tragedy specific to our times and as timelessly resonant as Sophocles. The final pages are heart-stopping." Kelly Cherry, author of Twelve Women in a Country Called America and A Kelly Cherry Reader

"'A Warsaw Chronicle' renews love for the life in America" by Frank Bergman, Walter D. Edmonds Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and German at Utica College. Review published in the Observer-Dispatch, March 9, 2017

...Finally - and most importantly for the readers of this review - "A Warsaw Chronicle" is an extraordinarily well-written, often riveting mix of fiction and autobiography."

Author Bio

Carol Hebald taught creative writing at the university level for thirteen years before resigning to write full time. She has since published the novella collection, Three Blind Mice (Unicorn Press, 1989), the memoir, The Heart Too Long Suppressed (Northeastern University Press, 2001); and more recently four books of poetry: Delusion of Grandeur (2016), Colloquy (2015), Spinster by the Sea (2005), and Little Monologs (2004). Carol lives in New York and is currently working on a play about the Watergate heroine Martha Mitchell.