The noonday cemetery and other stories / Gustaw Herling ; translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herling-Grudziński, Gustaw, 1919-2000.

Contributor:

Johnston, Bill, 1960-

Standardized Title:

Short stories. Selections. English

Language:

English

Polish

Subjects (All):

Herling-Grudziński, Gustaw, 1919-2000--Translations into English.

Herling-Grudziński, Gustaw.

Herling-Grudziński, Gustaw, 1919-2000.

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

281 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions, 2003.

Summary:

The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories, selected by Herling himself shortly before his death in 2000, contains thirteen brilliant stories spanning the last twenty years of his life. Since Gustaw Herling's The Island was published to great acclaim in 1993, the number of American readers of this "genius...[who] by now is the most famous Polish writer" (Peter Levi, The Independent) has grown. Herling's memoir, A World Apart, is among the most powerful accounts of life in the Soviet gulag; and Volcano and Miracle, published in 1996, contains short fiction and prose writings from his Journal Written at Night. But nowhere before have Herling's best stories -- and Herling was indeed a master of the short story -- been compiled and published in English translation.

The stories contained herein are profound and beautifully told. In "The Noonday Cemetery," an eerie graveyard on an Italian hillside overlooks the sea and hides the secrets of a murder (or suicide?). "Beata, Santa," Herling's critique of the Pope's abortion stance, raised the ire of the Catholic Church when it was first published; it describes the plight of a lovely young Polish woman, who, raped by Serbs, moves afterwards to a presbytery in Italy, and is pressured by the Church to keep her child. In "A Hot Breath of the Desert" the terrifying deterioration of the lives of a young archeologist couple, who settle down in the idyllic region of Lucania, is recounted by two old men with heart disease strolling the Naples waterfront.

These timeless stories, dealing with moral, often historical, subjects and written in passionate, deeply affecting prose, affirm without a doubt the assessment by The Boston Globe, that Herling is "a writer of stylistic mastery and moral depth, who deserves to be placed among the best in any language."

Contents:

The noonday cemetery

A hot breath from the desert

The eyetooth of Barabbas

Beata, Santa

The height of summer

Ashes

Notebook of William Moulding, pensioner

The silver coffer

Ugolone da Todi

The exorcist's brief confession

Don Ildebrando

Suor Strega

A madrigal of mourning.

ISBN:

0811215296

OCLC:

51342655