The Forward has run a pair of interesting stories about post-war Polish-Jewish writers and how they see themselves.
In particular, I’m intrigued by Hanna Krall, a Polish-Jewish writer who has not received much attention in the United States.
She’s written several books that received nice recognition in Germany, France and Sweden but nothing here.
That’s a shame because people actually go out of their way to note how her writing style differs from the typical hack. They say her prose is “compressed, unadorned and journalistic.” I like it already.
Here’s more from Publisher’s Weekly on her book, “The Woman from Hamburg and Other True Stories“:
Braiding history with imagination, she produces necessary accounts that incisively unveil and interrogate the ruptured historical legacy of Jews after WWII.
The Forward had similar praise for Krall:
Her style — characterized by brief, restrained narrative with a handful of dialogues and monologues and very little authorial comment — is one reason why Krall, who has written 17 books, is known as “the queen of Polish reportage.” In the early 1990s, she was a driving force behind long-form journalism in the highly praised supplement of the newly established Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s most influential daily.
It’s nice to see the possibility of vibrant Jewish literature being born in a place that once had so, so much.
What would be really phenomenal is if these writers turned out works in Yiddish.
One day perhaps.
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