The author's first novel, originally published in Poland in 1956, translated into 15 languages and made into a film. It gave voice to the disenchantment of the younger generation growing up under Communism and tells of two young people searching for somewhere to consummate their love.

8th Day of the Week

Hłasko, Marek

Secker Warburg

Killing the Second Dog

Written during the author's exile from his native Poland, which followed the publication in 1956 of his controversial "The Eighth Day of the Week", this novel is a blend of black humour and pathos, and follows two Polish exiles in Israel as they orchestrate an elaborate con game.

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.

In the period following Stalin's death in 1953, Marek Hlasko was the most acclaimed and popular contemporary writer in Poland. The Eighth Day of the Week, his first novel, caused a sensation in Poland in 1956 and then in the West, where Hlasko was hailed as "a Communist James Dean." Two young people search for a place to consummate their relationship in a world jammed with strangers and emptied of all intimacy. Their yearning for the redemptive power of authentic love is thwarted by the moral and aesthetic ugliness around them. The Eighth Day of the Week memorably depicts the tension between the degradation to which the characters are forced to submit and the preservation of an inner purity which they refuse to relinquish.

The Eighth Day of the Week (European Classics)

Northwestern University Press

The Eighth Day of the Week:

Praeger

Graveyard: (English and Polish Edition)

History & Criticism

Praeger Pub Text

Beautiful Twentysomethings

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Northern Illinois University Press

Marek Hlasko's literary autobiography is a vivid, first-hand account of the life of a young writer in 1950s Poland and a fascinating portrait of the ultimately short-lived rebel generation. Told in a voice suffused with grit and morbid humor, Hlasko's memoir was a classic of its time. In it he recounts his adventures and misadventures, moving swiftly from one tale to the next. Like many writers of his time, Hlasko also worked in screen writing, and his memoir provides a glimpse into just how markedly the medium of film affected him from his very earliest writing days. The memoir details his relationships with such giants of Polish culture as the filmmaker Roman Polanski and the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski. Hlasko is the most prominent example of a writer who broke free from the Socialist-Realist formulae that dominated the literary scene in Poland since it fell under the influence of the Soviets. He made his literary debut in 1956 and immediately became a poster boy for Polish Literature. He subsequently worked at some of the most important newspapers and magazines for intellectual life in Warsaw. Hlasko was sent to Paris on an official mission in 1958, but when he published in an \u00e9migr\u00e9 Parisian press his novel of life in post-War Poland, he was denied a renewal of his passport. In effect, he was called back to Poland, and when he refused to return he was stripped of his Polish citizenship. He spent the rest of his life working in exile. Marek Hlasko was a rebel whose writing and iconoclastic way of life became an inspiration to those of his generation and after. Here, in the first English translation of his literary memoir, Ross Ufberg deftly renders Hlasko's wry and passionate voice.

Beautiful Twentysomethings (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)

Written during the author's exile from his native Poland, which followed the publication in 1956 of his controversial "The Eighth Day of the Week", this novel is a blend of black humour and pathos, and follows two Polish exiles in Israel as they orchestrate an elaborate con game.

Cane Hill Pr

“History has no use for witnesses.” When 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 the men he had fought alongside, but each meeting with his former comrades takes him further into the underworld that he realizes has been there all along. Written midway through Hłasko’s meteoric career, The Graveyard set its author and the Polish Communist government implacably against each other, and it’s easy to see why: Hłasko pulls no punches in portraying a regime that is maintained by constant surveillance, intimidation, and profound psychological manipulation. A classic novel of political disillusionment from one of Poland’s seminal writers, an original “Angry Young Man” who lived fast, died young, and wrote brilliantly.

The Graveyard (Neversink)

Dramas & Plays

Melville House

"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 Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
 Robert and Jacob are down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1960s. They're planning to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, adrift in the nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, whose heart is open; the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty, and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with her. It's not just Jacob who's performing a role; nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Marek Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

New Vessel Press

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