The Eighth Day of the Week

by Bloomsbury Academic

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780837178967
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/24/1975
Series:	European Classics Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Hlasko began his literary career as a correspondent among workers. His first stories were published in 1955 in literary periodicals; their publication as a single collection under the title First Step in the Clouds met with a very favorable reception. He followed up his success with a novella, The Eighth Day of the Week (1956). While Hlasko's popularity grew during the Polish "thaw," he faced increasing difficulties with the authorities and defected to the West in 1958. In emigration, his portrayal of life under communism grew harsher; the publication of The Graveyard increased the Polish authorities' hostility toward him. He died in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1969.

Editorial Reviews

"He is a flaming literary talent which has burned a ravaging furrow through the murky folds of the curtain that separates East from West." —Harrison Salisbury



"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental and tortured." —New York Times



"The sort of book you can read at one sitting and remember the rest of your life." —Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher