A Polish Book of Monsters contains five stories of speculative fiction edited and translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel, award-winning translator of the fiction of Stanislaw Lem. From dystopian science fiction to fabled fantasy, these dark tales grip us through the authors' ability to create utterly convincing alien worlds that nonetheless reflect our own.
Six-year-old Anna Pellowski’s older siblings, Jacob, Franciszek, Barney, Mary and Pauline are exposed to English at school, but only Polish is spoken at home. The younger children—Anna, Julian, Anton barely know a word of their new country’s language, but then neither do many of their neighbors. When the family goes to town to celebrate the 100th birthday of the United States, the speaker gives his speech in a mix of German, Polish, Bohemian and Norwegian! Some years before, in the mid 1800’s, Anna’s mother, father and brother Baby Jacob had come from Poland to live in a tiny sod house in Western Wisconsin and establish the very first farm in the entire Latsch Valley. Now the growing family lives in a real house, with neighbors on every side, and the world for quietly curious Anna is filled with fascinating possibilities—as well as lots of hard work. Sometimes she dreams of going back to the Poland she is always hearing about, but increasingly she realizes that life in Latsch Valley, with its rich cultural rhythm of work, play and religious faith, holds everything she could possibly want.
The twenty-first century has witnessed an explosion of speculative fiction in translation (SFT). Rachel Cordasco examines speculative fiction published in English translation since 1960, ranging from Soviet-era fiction to the Arabic-language dystopias that emerged following the Iraq War. Individual chapters on SFT from Korean, Czech, Finnish, and eleven other source languages feature an introduction by an expert in the language's speculative fiction tradition and its present-day output. Cordasco then breaks down each chapter by subgenre--including science fiction, fantasy, and horror--to guide readers toward the kinds of works that most interest them. Her discussion of available SFT stands alongside an analysis of how various subgenres emerged and developed in a given language. She also examines the reasons a given subgenre has been translated into English. An informative and one-of-a-kind guide, Out of This World offers readers and scholars alike a tour of speculative fiction's new globalized era.
'Disturbingly compelling' Guardian A blackly comic tale about two children you would never want to meet - from the script writer for Killing Eve Season Two and director of Promising Young Woman Set in the Cornish town of Fowey, all is not as idyllic as the beautiful seaside town might seem. The body of a young woman is discovered in the nets of a fishing boat. It is established that the woman was murdered. Most are shocked and horrified. But there is somebody who is not - a twelve-year-old girl. She is delighted; she loves murders. Soon she is questioning the inhabitants of the town in her own personal investigation. But it is a bit boring on her own. Then Miles Giffard, a similarly odd twelve-year-old boy, arrives in Fowey with his mother, and they start investigating together. Oh, and also playing games that re-enact the murders. Just for fun, you understand... A book about two twelve-year-olds that is definitely not for kids.
Perfect for Halloween, this hilarious story is about a boy who follows in his father's footsteps . . . in his own monstrously unique way! Just before midnight, on the night of a full moon, a young barber stays out past his bedtime to go to work. His customers may be regulars, but they are anything but normal--after all, even monsters need haircuts! Business is steady all night, and this barber is prepared for anything with his scissors, rotting tonic, horn polish, and stink wax. It's a tough job, but someone's got to help these creatures maintain their ghoulish good looks.
Polish science fiction master Marek S. Huberath’s mind-bending Nest of Worlds—his first novel to appear in English—is a metafictional adventure through a dystopian world that owes as much to Borges, Saramago, and even Thomas More as it does to Stanislaw Lem. In this world, every thirty-five years residents must move to a new “Land," and each person bears a "Significant Name" that foretells the manner of their deaths. A rare married couple in the Land of Davabel, Gavein Throzz and Ra Mahleiné each make sacrifices to stay together. As they navigate the difficult terrain, the two find themselves amidst a series of deaths linked only by their connection to Gavein himself. Struggling to solve the mystery, keep his ailing wife alive, and surviving his new notoriety as the incarnation of Death, Gavein discovers a book titled Nest of Worlds—populated by characters whose fates lie in the hands of the reader, and who, in turn, read their own versions of Nest of Worlds. Huberath’s novel is a stirring meditation on reality, love, and the darkest aspects of human nature. Reviews "I am inclined to call Nest of Worlds...a masterwork not of science fiction, but of Polish fiction. It is a book where characters live and die, and—more importantly—where we struggle with the fact that they do." —3:AM Magazine Marek S. Huberath has been a major figure in Polish science fiction for the last twenty-five years. A three-time winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award, Huberath is also a professor of biophysics and biological physics at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and an avid mountain climber. His novels include Nest of Worlds, Cities under the Rock, and Western Portal of the Cathedral in Lugdunum. Michael Kandel is best known for his translation of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem—including Fiasco, His Master's Voice, and The Futurological Congress. He was an editor at Harcourt, where he acquired authors Jonathan Lethem, Ursula K. Le Guin, and James Morrow. Kandel was a Fulbright student in Poland, 1966-67; received his PhD in Slavic at Indiana University; has written science fiction, short stories, and novels; and is presently an editor at the Modern Language Association.
Vivid accounts of life in a Soviet prison camp by the author of Inhuman Land. Interned with thousands of Polish officers in the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp at Starobielsk in September 1939, Józef Czapski was one of a very small number to survive the massacre in the forest of Katyń in April 1940. Memories of Starobielsk portrays these doomed men, some with the detail of a finished portrait, others in vivid sketches that mingle intimacy with respect, as Czapski describes their struggle to remain human under hopeless circumstances. Essays on art, history, and literature complement the memoir, showing Czapski’s lifelong engagement with Russian culture. The short pieces on painting that he wrote while on a train traveling from Moscow to the Second Polish Army’s strategic base in Central Asia stand among his most lyrical and insightful reflections on art.
