Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk translated by Bill Johnston Dalkey Archive Press, April 2010
Stasiuk, exploring a region that so many have assumed to be irresistibly converging with the West, has mapped what Freud might have called its ‘genetic memory.’ - Benjamin Moser, Harper’s Magazine
New Europe: Plays from the Continent by Bonnie Marranca and Malgorzata Semil (editors) PAJ Publications, January 2010
The first U.S. play collection to feature work from several countries on the European continent in the post-1989 era includes Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk’s The Squirrel-Man. Seven plays explore issues of terrorism, immigration, youth, globalization, families, and post-communist culture in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and expansion of the European Union.
Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage Palgrave Macmillan, January 2010
Published, in part, through a grant from the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Essays, interviews and performance texts on international documentary theatre.
Polish contributions include essays on the history of documentary theater in Poland by Agnieszka Sowinska and Joanna Ostrowska, as well as the texts of two Polish plays: The Files by the Theatre of the Eighth Day and Burn Your House Down by Pawel Demirski, along with an interview with Demirski by Pawel Sztarbowski, We’re not Hyenas.
Poland’s Angry Romantic: Two Poems And a Play by Juliusz Slowacki by Juliusz Slowacki edited and translated by Peter Cochran, Bill Johnston, Miroslawa Modrzewska, and Catherine O’Neil Cambridge Scholars Publishing, November 2009
New translations of three key works by Poland’s great Romantic bard: his meditative poem Agamemnon's Tomb, and his hilarious mock-epic Beniowski, in the style of Byron's Don Juan.
Little Chopin by Michal Rusinek translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, November 2009
A wonderful gift for the budding musician or composer in your family!
Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz translated by Danuta Borchardt Grove Press, November 2009
First translation directly from Polish of this modernist masterpiece!
Gombrowicz's strange, bracing final novel probes the divide between young and old while providing a grotesque evocation of obsession. – Publishers Weekly
Playwrights Before the Fall: Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution by Daniel Gerould (editor) Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, November 2009
This first multi-author international anthology of Eastern European plays to appear in English includes Slawomir Mrozek’s Portrait,as well as plays by Karel Steigerwald, Gyorgy Spiró, Matei Visniec, and Dušan Jovanovic.
The Wall in My Head: Words & Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain edited by Words without Borders Open Letter Books, November 2009
The Wall in My Head is an exciting anthology of texts and images by writers and artists who witnessed the collapse of Communism firsthand and by those who grew up in its wake. Polish authors Zbigniew Herbert, Pawel Huelle, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Dorota Maslowska, and Andrzej Stasiuk are featured.
The editors have arranged these high-caliber works to create a tension between celebratory and somber writing, and that gives the book a touch of greatness.– The Brooklyn Rail
Rediscovering Traces of Memory: The Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia by Jonathan Webber photographs by Chris Schwarz Indiana University Press, October 2009
A moving account of what is being done to preserve the memory of what was lost and of the people, both Poles and Jews, involved in this important undertaking. – Antony Polonsky
Zapolska’s Women: Three Plays: Malka Szwarcenkopf, The Man, and Miss Maliczewska by Gabriela Zapolska edited and translated by Teresa Murjas Intellect Books, October 2009
Zapolska was one of Poland’s foremost modernist playwrights, and… an uncompromising explorer of gender construction and class oppression in fin-de-siècle Poland.
Chopin’s Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom by Jonathan D. Bellman Oxford University Press, October 2009
Chopin's Second Ballade, Op. 38 is frequently performed, yet remains very poorly understood – disagreement prevails on issues from its tonic and two-key structure to its posited relationship with the poems of the great Romantic bard Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin's Polish Ballade is a reexamination and close analysis of this famous work, revealing the Ballade as a piece with a powerful political story to tell.
Ingenious, entertaining, and convincing – Jonathan Bellman's book deftly demonstrates how the study of a single piece of music can open a new window onto an entire cultural world. – Kenneth Hamilton
Performative Democracy by Elzbieta Matynia Paradigm Publishers (The Yale Cultural Sociology Series), October 2009
Spanning Polish history from the days of incipient rebellion against Communist rule through the Solidarity movement of the 1980s to today s democratic Poland, Performative Democracy sheds new light on what it is people are doing when they act democratically. Even as Matynia, who participated in many of the events she describes, elucidates their common features, she captures and infectiously renders their exhilarating atmosphere and spirit to the reader.
– Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills In Chechnya by Wojciech Jagielski translated translated by Soren Gauger Seven Stories Press, October 2009
Wojciech Jagielski has already achieved recognition for his reporting from the most inflamed points on our globe. [This latest work] will only confirm his reputation. – Ryszard Kapuscinski
Grotowski’s Empty Room: A Challenge to the Theatre by Paul Allain (editor) Seagull Books, September 2009
The essays in Grotowski's Empty Room analyze how the internationally renowned Polish director Grotowski’s explorations in the theater continue to challenge dramatists and directors.
The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt: War Through a Woman's Eyes, 1939-1940 by Rulka Langer Aquila Polonica, September 2009
It is absolutely one of the best eye-witness accounts of WWII Poland that I’ve ever read.
- Alan Furst, author of The Foreign Correspondent and The Spies of Warsaw
