The selection of shorter texts by Henryk Grynberg was taken by the editor and translator Olga Hostovská, in agreement with the author, mainly from the books Życie ideologiczne (Jewish School; Student Life, Cheerful Life; Exodus) and Szkice rodzinne (Socialism in Poland; Home; Racoon), in such a way that the selected thematic units map the roughly fifty-year period from the end of the 1940s to the end of the millennium. Here the reader is gradually introduced to the experiences of a Jewish school pupil, the joys of a university student at the time of the exposure of Stalin's crimes, the post-war construction of the country, the strange atmosphere of Gomółka's Poland, and the reasons that led the author to emigrate. The last two prose poems (Obligation; We Jews from Dobre), translated by Daniela Lehárová, were selected from Monolog polsko-żydowski (2003). The first recounts the events of the 1990s, when the author returned to Poland to fulfil a promise made to his dead father. The final essay, We, the Jews of Dobre, brings the reader closer to the position of the Jewish author, who lives in the USA but writes neither in English nor Yiddish, but in Polish.
Czech edition