"Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull."—The Washington Post“His writing is taut and psychologically nuanced like that of the great dime-store novelist Georges Simenon, his novelistic world as profane as Isaac Babel's."—Wall Street Journal"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."—The New York Times"A must-read . . . piercing and compelling."—Kirkus Reviews"A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue."—Roman Polanski “Marek Hlasko ... lived through what he wrote and died of an overdose of solitude and not enough love."— Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There"A glittering black comedy ... that is equally entertaining and wrenching."— Publishers Weekly"The idol of Poland's young generation in 1956."— Czeslaw...

In this novel of breathtaking tension and sweltering love, two desperate friends on the edge of the law—one of them tough and gutsy, the other small and scared—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov's recently married younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov's business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn't help that a beautiful German widow named Ursula is rooming next door. What follows is a story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, all conveyed in hardboiled prose reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a cinematic style that would make Bogart and Brando green with envy.The novel features a critical introduction by George Z. Gasyna, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the...

"A spokesman for those who were angry and beat, turbulent, temperamental and tortured... In The Graveyard, Hlasko stabs his knife into the regime and draws it out dripping blood." --The New York Times "Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull." --The Washington PostWhen Marek Hłasko sent this novel to publishers in Poland in the mid-1950s, it was uniformly rejected. When he asked why, he was told: "This Poland doesn't exist."Long out of print, The Graveyard is Hłasko's portrait of a system built on such denial and willful blindness. Factory worker Franciszek Kowalski is on his way home one evening after drinking with an old friend from the People's Army when he unthinkingly yells some insults at a policeman. His outburst is taken as criticism of the government, and he is arrested and then expelled from the Party.Kowalski attempts to rehabilitate himself by gathering testimonies from...