Mikołaj Grynberg
REJWACH
(Nisza, 2017)
129pp
“These small, searing prose pieces are moving and unsettling at the same time. If the diagnosis they present is right, then we have a great problem in Poland.” – Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize laureate and author of Flights
Rejwach is the debut fiction work by Mikołaj Grynberg, one of Poland’s major Jewish authors. For many years, Grynberg has been collecting and publishing oral histories of Polish Jews in the generations since the Holocaust. In Rejwach, he recrafts those histories into short, moving stories, offering a panorama of Jewish experience in Poland today. Though the stories are fictionalized, each has the ring of truth.
The book is made up of short monologues, each by a different character and about three pages long. The individuals are Jewish, Christian, and non-religious, from all backgrounds and walks of life. All have had their lives shaped by Poland’s Jewish history in some way—people discovering as adults they are Jewish, Jews wondering if they feel more at home in Poland or Israel, ordinary Poles trying to do right by their country’s history, anti-Semites convinced all the fuss is ginned up for political reasons. Each of the stories is moving, intensely personal, and rendered in crystalline prose.
At this crucial moment for Jewish life in Poland and throughout the Western world, with the old ghosts of anti-Semitism reemerging in public debate and free speech under threat, a voice like Grynberg’s stands out. His work exposes the deep roots of systemic anti-Semitism, while emphasizing how resistant the day-to-day lived reality is to simple analysis.
The author: Mikołaj Grynberg (b. 1966) is a photographer, author, and trained psychologist. His literary work has focused on the oral histories of different generations of Polish Jews in the second half of the twentieth century. He has published three collections of “conversations” based on these histories: Survivors of the 20th Century (2012), I Accuse Auschwitz: Family Stories (2014), and The Book of Exodus (2018). In Rejwach (2017), his first work of fiction, Grynberg adapts these histories into monologues highlighting modern Poland’s complex and difficult relationship with its Jewish past. The book has been widely critically praised and was shortlisted for Poland’s top literary prize, the Nike.
SAMPLE
Someone where you’ve known her since you were born and know everything about her, because her whole life she told every one of us her stories a hundred times each. And then you find out you know a little bit, but mostly you don’t.
Our grandmother died, almost a year ago now. But before she did, she managed to tell us what you’re probably already imagining. We’re standing beside that bed of hers, the whole family. Parents, me and my sister and our little kids, and suddenly, before you know it, she’s saying she’s a Jew and she couldn’t pass away without telling us. We look at one another and can’t believe our ears, because we didn’t hardly look like Jews at all.
My sister takes me off to the side and says grandma’s not getting enough oxygen now, that’s why she’s talking like that. But grandma doesn’t give up. She starts telling our family story. About those ghettos of yours, those camps, Auschwitzes, sisters, brothers, gas and all the rest. What’s a normal person supposed to make of all that?
For inquiries or a longer sample, email [email protected].
