Controlled Conversations

by Karol Lagodzki

Overview

"Lagodzki's prose is as powerful as his plot is gripping. A historically astute tale with deep emotional impact. (...) OUR VERDICT: GET IT." Kirkus Reviews

In 1982 Soviet-controlled Poland-a time and place of suspicion and mistrust-when geopolitical forces and violent men descend upon her little town of Zygmuntowo, Emilia must decide if she's willing to risk prison or worse for self-respect and for her unexpected love.

A telephone station switchboard operator ordered to monitor all calls, Emilia overhears a mysterious coded conversation. It continues to distract her, but not as much as the growing realization that she's falling in unsanctioned love with her best friend Kalina. Meanwhile, outside the city of Frombork, Antek, a shipyard engineer and a Solidarity labor union treasurer, escapes from prison and works to recover the union's money, a task which in time leads him to Emilia's town. In the metropolitan city of Gdańsk, Roman, a secret police major, wants the money for himself and dreams of his own escape and the magical beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

As the only daughter of a local Communist Party apparatchik, Emilia has enjoyed a sheltered life, but with the advent of martial law, her mother's influence can no longer shield her. She faces choices she never expected to make when she discovers her best friend's and lover's involvement with the resistance. With new allies and enemies in town, the time to choose a side is now.

In his debut novel, Karol Lagodzki asks: What would you do?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888192061
Publisher:	Milford House Press
Publication date:	08/20/2024
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Karol Lagodzki, a native of Poland, is an exophonic author of English-language fiction. His stories have appeared in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, NUNUM, Streetlight Magazine, and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine's Ruritania Prize for Short Fiction. Controlled Conversations is his debut novel.He holds an MFA in creative writing, buys more books than he can read or afford-usually novels and short story collections, though he's been known to pick up an odd book of poetry or accessible science-and gives back to the literary community by serving as a reader for literary journals. Karol's non-writing careers have ranged from fixing stucco while dangling from roofs in Paris to sorting through human cadaver heads in Florida to developing and marketing medical devices for critically ill people in the American Midwest, but his true ambition is to remain a student for as long as he possibly can and make sure more stories make it out of his head and onto the page.Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful, unconventional family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog.

Editorial Reviews

2024-09-26
An engineer working for an illicit labor union risks his life to secure their funds in Lagodzki’s novel.

In 1982, Antoni Adamczyk (he prefers to go by Antek) is an engineer in Frombork, Poland, living under martial law imposed by the Soviet Union. He works for the local union chapter of Solidarity—a group that opposes the Soviet occupation—as its treasurer, in charge of the $20,000 he’s securely hidden in Zygmuntowo. When he runs afoul of the authorities, he is imprisoned, though the money remains safe. Antek is given a fraught chance at freedom—he declares that this is all he really wants for himself and his future children—by Roman Stelmach, a major in the Bezpieka, the secret police. Roman allows Antek to escape so he will lead him to the money, a sum that will allow Roman to begin his life afresh in Rio de Janeiro. In this riveting tale, sleepy Zygmuntowo is the stage for an anxious, gathering intrigue—there, a telephone operator, Emilia Sokołowska, finds herself entrusted with the money and suddenly becomes a potential target of Roman and his henchmen as well. Emilia is an extraordinary character, an artfully drawn symbol of Poland’s humiliation under Soviet despotism—she is reduced to spying on the phone calls of others, cataloging their “sin, love, and banality” and reporting them to the police. She falls in love with her best friend, Kalina, who is being repeatedly raped by her father, Pan Zalewski. Emilia hatches a plan to exact revenge upon Pan called Operation Pig, which is to be executed with another of her closest friends, Agata, also the victim of his sexual abuse. Emilia’s mother is a Communist Party functionary, and as a result she enjoys a certain measure of protection from the authorities, but Emilia is finally drawn into a predicament that her mother will not be able to extricate her from.

Lagodzki’s depiction of Poland’s plight is both subtle and luridly vivid; every significant character, including Roman (ostensibly an enforcer of tyranny), longs to be delivered into liberty. Roman might be the novel’s most complex character. In his youth, he planned on becoming an architect, but once his girlfriend, Bernadeta, became pregnant, he was compelled to drop out of school and find work with the Bezpieka; he’s an ordinary man endowed with an opportunistic nihilism. Emilia is a tantalizingly rich character as well, a moving example of the ways in which totalitarianism makes a private life distinct from political reality simply impossible. While the novel is politically savvy, the two main plots are essentially affecting love stories—the love of Emilia for Kalina and of Antek for his wife, Dorota. Here, the author captures the tender shock of electricity Kalina catalyzes in Emilia’s heart, setting off a conflagration of ungovernable emotion: “Did the desire to kiss Kalina make her a freak? As if the missed masses and holy communions had accumulated to mount a set of devil’s horns on her forehead. Horns or not, if she had any money, she would have given all of it to Kalina just to see her smile.” Lagodzki’s prose is as powerful as his plot is gripping.

A historically astute tale with deep emotional impact.

Kirkus Reviews