Minor Apocalypse

By Tadeusz Konwicki

Book Overview

As in his novel The Polish Complex, Konwicki's A Minor Apocalypse stars a narrator and character named Konwicki, who has been asked to set himself on fire that evening in front of the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw in an act of protest. He accepts the commission, but without any clear idea of whether he will actually go through with the self-immolation. He spends the rest of the day wandering the streets of Warsaw, being tortured by the secret police and falling in love. Both himself and Everyman, the character-author experiences the effects of ideologies and bureaucracies gone insane with, as always in history, the individual struggling for survival rather than offering himself up on the pyre of the greater good. Brilliantly translated by Richard Lourie, A Minor Apocalypse is one of the most important novels to emerge from Poland in the last twenty five years.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564782174
• ISBN13: 9781564782175
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

what a book

What a book. Konwicki walks through a man's worst day with such grace and humor and startling language, that we forget that what we're really watching is a funeral. The best novel i've read in years. I wish I'd written it.

An Incredable Novel.

This incredable novel can be easily treated as a highlight of the late 1970s Polish political prose. It exposes human being and his situation in the realm of essential individual and private, but also social and historical decisions. "A Minor Apocalypse" exposes questions of loneliness, death, meaning of individual struggle with the political system; specific type of love and human passion; meanders of life; meanig of art; alcoholism... A great prose!

A relic of the Cold War

I enjoyed this book a great deal and was fascinated by it as well. The Cold War seems so far away now, and this book captures the feel of the vague, aimless, crumbling, exhausting Eastern bloc so well. It's not a frivolous book at all, but is still quite funny in the same way that Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut were. I just wish I understood all the cultural references. ...

Most Amazing Book

The thing that separates most Polish authors from other Western authors is the sense of responsibility they bring to writing. Minor Apocalypse is a prime example of this. Konwicki's use of self-reference and surrealism is not only breath-taking and provoking, it allows him to make very bold (for the time) comments on post-war Poland and the machinery of politics, propoganda, and activism. You follow the author around on what might be his last day on Earth and in that day he lives an enitre lifetime. He forms and breaks friendships, he falls in and out of love (within a few paragraphs), he is awoken and handed his destiny. But most of all, this book, while profound, is very funny. You will find yourself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all...