A Thousand Peaceful Cities

(Paperback)

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Description

Set in 1963, in the latter days of the Polish post-Stalinist thaw. Jerzyk, is a teenager who is keenly interested in the life of his father, a retired postal administrator and his father's closest friend, Mr Traba, a failed lutheran clergyman, alcoholic and would be Polish insurrectionist. One drunken afternoon, Mr Traba and the narrator's father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity, travel to Warsaw and assassinate the Polish head of state and they decide to involve Jerzyk in their plan.

Reviews

"...it is the grotesquery of Pilch's buffoonery that makes A Thousand Peaceful Cities such an urbane pleasure."Steven G. Kellman, Barnes and Nobles Review "A mind-bending romp by Polish journalist and novelist Jerzy Pilch, miraculously translated by David Frick and published this month by Open Letter."Anne Kjellberg, Little Star While the idea of a quixotic assassination attempt as rite of passage seems ridiculous, it offers Pilch a prize-winning Polish novelist and newspaper columnist a way to get at the absurdity of politics, the unbridgeable gap between public and private life."David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times "Jerzy Pilch, author of The Mighty Angel, has written a moving, bittersweet meditation on family, responsibility, and the passage of time."Rebecca Oppenheimer, Howard County Times "...the unruly, wonderfully erudite, and hilariously surreal product of a boisterous imagination set loose."Valentina Zanca, Words Without Borders "[Pilch] slashes mercilessly at the holy of holiest of his own nation. He ridicules its virtues and its shortcomings; he spares neither hero nor villain."Sally Boss, The Sarmatian Review "With his latest, Pilch masterfully negotiates sentiment with a clear-eyed vision of his autobiographical narrators shortcomings and disappointments, suggesting a Dubliners set in Krakow."Publishers Weekly (starred)

Author Bio

Jerzy Pilch is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel. His novels have been translated into numerous languages. David Frick is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.