At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque • Anatole France
A humorous and erudite journey into an eighteenth-century world, a masterpiece of Polish-century world, a masterpiece of Polish translation and a gateway to the culture of earlier ages.
Books
Selected reviews, essays and notes about literature. This section follows the structure of the Polish version, but contains only selected texts.
Three Visions of Provincial America
A comparative essay on Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and Marilynne Robinson — three visions of solitude, religion and strangeness in provincial America.
Wise Blood • 1952 • Flannery O’Connor
A grotesque Southern Gothic novel filled with religious obsession, violence and powerful sentences, but more peculiar than moving and stranger than truly profound.
The Ballad of the Sad Café • Carson McCullers
A compact and intense story of loneliness, desire and the painful asymmetry of love in a grotesque small-town world.
Gilead • 2004 • Marilynne Robinson
A spiritual testament shaped from an uneventful life, but lacking the tension, mystery and intellectual energy needed to make that life truly compelling.
Wolf Hall • 2009 • Hilary Mantel
A superbly reconstructed historical background, but no compelling story, psychological depth or living central character.