Description
Book SynopsisThe Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek''s award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a ''tamed progressive'' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers'' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.
Trade ReviewExtraordinary . . . Mrozek's brief fables are something like Kafka's stories, but they're funnier * Spectator *
The satiric intent is unambiguous, and offers hope to the oppressed mind...so deft and so piercing -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *
[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. -- CJ Schüler * Independent on Sunday *
This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *
I urge you to go and read them. -- Adam Thirlwell * New Statesman *
This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. -- Stephen Vizinczey * Daily Telegraph *
