Polish Complex     by Tadeusz Konwicki, Translated by Richard Lourie Original title: Kompleks polski Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: November 1, 1998 Format: Paperback, 224 pages ISBN: 1564782018 List Price: $12.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide

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The Polish Complex takes place on Christmas Eve, from early morning until late in the evening, as a line of peo ple (including the narrator, whose name is Konwicki) stand and wait in front of a jewelry store in Warsaw. Through the narrator we are told of what happens among those standing in line outside this store, what happens as the narrator's mind thinks and ran ts about the current state of Poland, and what happens as he imagines the failed Polish rebellion of 1863.

The novel's form allows Konwicki (both character and author) to roam around and through Poland's past and present, and to range freely through whatever comes to his attention. By turns comic, lyrical, despairing, and liberating, The Polish Complex stands as one of the most important novels to have come out of Poland since World War II.

"The Polish Complex is a powerful and engaging book, demonstratin g how in the fortunate parts of the world history becomes a private obsession, and how the collective subconscious can determine the fates of both individuals and nations."—New York Review of Books

"An impassioned, furious polemic on Poland's impossible condition. Konwicki . . . writes like a man who has nothing to lose—and who wants to use that freedom for the primary and urgent task of speaking the raw, unmediated truth."— New York Times Book Review

"Like such other anarchic spirits as Flann O'Brien and Celine, Konwicki has a lovely way of writing, which never clogs chaos with self-pity and bestows upon the direst pages sentences of casual magic. . . . Konwicki is effortlessly witty."—John Updike, New Yorker

"The Polish Complex allows us to enter the life of Poland and experience its absurdities and contradictions. Through it we view the world from inside the collapsing human pyramid."—Washington Post Book World

"Bitterly funny."—Voice Literary Supplement

"How many Poles does it take to shed light on the human condition, to reveal the absurdity, the banality—to see hopes of salvation misplaced in distractions? It takes one."—New York Press