ANDRZEJEWSKI Jerzy
ASH AND DIAMOND
Novel.
First edition!
Warsaw 1948 [February]. Czytelnik. 8, pp. 334, [1]. brochure. The Good Book Club, no. 1
"In 1946 Andrzejewski began writing his most famous novel, Ashes and Diamonds. Starting initially with a story about a lawyer known for his integrity, who became a capo hated by his fellow prisoners in a concentration camp and wanted to regain his former place in society after the war, the writer painted a panorama of Poland just after the war. The novel is dominated by the plot of Maciek Chelmicki, a young Home Army soldier who is ordered to carry out a death sentence on the secretary of the PPR. The protagonist experiences a rift between the necessity of soldierly fidelity to his oath and the desire to return to a normal life. Published in 1948, the work generated great interest and strong controversy. The author was blamed for falsifying history, portraying the communist takeover as a peaceful act in accordance with the will of the people, while the AK was portrayed as a destabilizing and troublemaking element. Reviewers of the left-wing Kuźnica, on the other hand, held Andrzejewski responsible for the fact that his novel did not have a clear enough ideological message - Chelmicki was portrayed sympathetically, but they lacked an optimistic vision of future Poland." Source: www.culture.pl
""The domination of the sinister actions of the underground [...] over the rationale of the opposing side, which either do not come to the fore at all in the novel, or are confined within the boundaries of the abstract humanitarianism of 'faith in man' (Marcin), or are presented as the rationale of only one doctrine (Szczuka) - constitutes, among other things, the wrongful climate of the novel," Melania Kierczynska in Kuźnica (quoted in M. Fik "Polish Culture after Yalta," London 1989, pp. 95-96).
Andrzejewski accepted these accusations and in a self-criticism published in 1950 titled. "Notes. Confessions and Deliberations of a Writer" dissociated himself from his earlier work, including "Ashes and Diamonds." The author systematically changed the text of the novel until 1954. Source: www.wikipedia.org.
A rare and important book because it deals with the difficult subject of the place of recent conspirators in the new postwar reality.
DB condition/ minor cracks and tears of the spine, minor folds of the covers, quite a NICE piece.
