This is the book that her many fans have been anxiously awaiting - the definitive, complete collection of poetry by the Nobel Prize-winning poet, including 164 poems in all, as well as the full text of her Nobel acceptance speech of December 7, 1996, in Stockholm. Beautifully translated by Stanislaw Bara«nczak and Clare Cavanagh, who won a 1996 PEN Translation Prize for their work, this volume is a must-have for all readers of poetry.

    Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth.Our young narrator-hero is suffering through the regulated boredom of high school when he is transfixed by a new teacher --an elegant "older woman" (she is thirty-two) who bewitches him with her glacial beauty and her strict intelligence. He resolves to learn everything he can about her and to win her heart.In a sequence of marvelously funny but sobering maneuvers, he learns much more than he expected to--about politics, Poland, the Spanish Civil War, and his own passion for theater and art--all while his loved one continues to elude him. Yet without his realizing it, his efforts--largely bookish and literary--to close in on Madame are his first steps to liberation as an artist. Later, during a stint as a teacher-in-training in his old school, he discovers that he himself has become a legendary figure to a new generation of students, and he begins to understand the deceits and blessings of myth, and its redemptive power.A winning portrait of an artist as a young man, Madame is at the same time a moving, engaging novel about strength and weakness, first love, and the efforts we make to reconcile, in art, the opposing forces of reason and passion.

    This story begins when Daniel Baldinger divorces the wife he loves because she cannot bear children. Believing that "a man must have sons to say Kaddish for him when he dies," he marries a much younger woman, and by 1913, Daniel and his second wife Lieba have eleven children, including six sons. In this richly textured portrait, Armstrong follows the Baldinger children's lives over decades, through the terrifying years of the Holocaust, to the present. Based on oral histories and the diaries of more than a dozen men and women, Mosaic is an extraordinary story of a family and one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.

    When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia.Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe.Richly imagined, weaving anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk's novel is an epic of a small place. Since its publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.

    This brilliant memoir is Adam Zagajewski's recollection of 1960s and 1970s communist Poland, where he was a fledgling writer, student of philosophy, and vocal dissident at the university in Krakow, Poland's most beautiful and ancient city.

    At times ridiculed and even persecuted, the Saint Faustina never wavered in her faith in that revelation. This biography is illustrated with contemporary photographs and includes a chapter of Saint Faustina's own words and prayers.

    This gorgeously illustrated book displays more than 150 works of art that celebrate the cross-cultural richness of Poland’s creative output during this period. From the dramatic uniform of the winged Hussar complete with feathers and leopard skin to traditional portraits of royalty to a Turkish-style beverage service, these splendid objects represent Poland’s diversity and breadth at a time when it was the largest land empire in Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The book addresses five areas of Polish culture in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The first section on the monarchy features objects relating to the kings who ruled during the period. The second section of the book is devoted to the magnate class and the objects that were typically seen in a nobleman’s home. The third part presents religious artworks, highlighted by an important seventeenth-century painting of Our Lady of Czestochowa. The section on the military, focusing on the cavalry, offers highly decorated battle regalia, weapons, and a Turkish tent. With gilded cups, clocks, decanters, and more, the decorative arts section of the book provides outstanding examples of the cross-cultural tenor of the Baroque era. The volume includes essays that set the art of Poland in the context of its history, geography, and culture; a timeline of major events; a map of the Polish Commonwealth; a glossary; a useful bibliography; and an index of exhibited works.This book is the catalogue for a major exhibition that will be shown at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore March 2– May 9, 1999. The exhibit then travels to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Huntsville Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Philbrook Museum of Art, and concludes at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, in the summer of 2000.The exhibition is organized and circulated by Art Services International in cooperation with the Walters Art Gallery.

    In eight days his native Poland would be invaded by the Germans. Shortly after that, the Russians rolled in under the Hitler-Stalin pact, and when Topolski tried to sneak across the border into Romania, he was captured by Soviet border guards. Thus began a more than two-year-long ordeal through the Soviet Union's outrageously absurd penal system. Writing with an unexpected sense of humor and irony and an almost superhuman capacity for recalling fascinating details, Topolski recounts the fight for survival in the gulag. Mendacious NKVD officers, whimsical pickpockets, ruthless youth gang members, wise political prisoners, Polish patriots, unfortunate Uzbechs and countless other unforgettable characters populate this often raucous odyssey. "But it's not for our brains to ponder these things," someone along Topolski's journey utters, mouthing an old Russian saying, "without vodka you can't figure it out." Ultimately Topolski escapes into Iran to join the Polish 2nd Corps which is being formed there to fight the Germans . . . but that's another story.