Review

“Szczepan Twardoch has brought Poland back onto the world literature stage.” —Die Welt

“Bold, powerful, occasionally surreal, a blend of historical fiction and noir thriller, multifaceted, intense and unsettling…Twardoch is one of the most fascinating and exciting storytellers of our day.” —Buchkultur

“Wonderful literature, a festival of language, a dance atop a volcano that toys deftly with narrative perspective, a gallery of colorful, sharply contoured figures.” —Tages-Anzeiger

“A great joy to read…This elegantly constructed and linguistically virtuosic book has a unique aura that’s practically impossible to resist.” —Deutschlandradio, Book of the Week

“A wild book, a crazy book, and a wise book but also a book full of cruelties, since it’s about boxers, gangsters, and monsters…in other words, it has everything you’d expect in a good novel, a very good novel.” —WDR 5

“Twardoch wins the reader over through gripping dialogue, compositional finesse, suspense that continues until the very end, and an unsettling story.” —Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Twardoch’s depictions of individual characters, atmospheres, and political currents are precise, vivid, and ecstatic, almost to the point of madness.” —Rolling Stone (Germany)

“A brilliant and inventive novel about the Polish-Jewish underworld of the interwar period…highly suspenseful.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“There is no doubt in my mind—Twardoch is at present a writer endowed with creative powers of which his peers can only dream…The King of Warsaw is a deftly written thriller with a subtle and unimposing issue behind it.” —Dariusz Nowacki, Gazeta Wyborcza

“The King of Warsaw reads terrifyingly, embarrassingly well—together with the author, we are immersed in a whole swamp of sick ideology, brutality, and infinite baseness.” —Marcin Fijołek, wPolityce.pl

“This is a real ‘boy’s’ novel. It begins with a punch—with a fast-paced description of a boxing match. All of Twardoch’s fetishes are in place: weapons, cars, suits. There’s exciting violence, a locker-room atmosphere, sexual fantasies, and voyeurism—we first see the main protagonist, the Jewish mafioso boxer Jakub Szapiro, through the eyes of an anxious skinny boy…A retro detective story in the spirit of Tyrmand, but darker and more brutal.” —Witold Mrozek

“After reading The King of Warsaw, it is hard to just put it back on the shelf and pretend that we have merely read a great book. The King of Warsaw rummages around in our guts and plunges deep into our consciences.” —Krzysztof Varga

“This is what Twardoch probably does best—he writes about Warsaw like it was [the] New York or Chicago of the time, and does it in fine style.” —Łukasz Grzymisławski

“Something like a Polish version of Inglourious Basterds, in which the oppressed Polish Jews, supported by a likable Polish gangster, take revenge on Polish anti-Semites. Or simply a gangster picaresque novel set in an era that is increasingly popular.” —Juliusz Kurkiewicz

“Ultimately, The King seems a study in extremes: love and violence, sympathy and revulsion, fantasy and reality. That Twardoch can balance these extremes is a testament to his skill.” —World Literature Today

About the Author

Szczepan Twardoch is the author of the bestselling novels Morphine, Drach, and The King. He is the recipient of numerous honors for his work, including the Brücke Berlin Preis, Le Prix du Livre Européen, and Nike Literary Award: Audience Award. Rights to his novels have been sold in over a dozen countries. The King of Warsaw is the first of his books to be translated into English. A TV series based on the novel is being produced by Canal+. He lives in Pilchowice, Upper Silesia. For more information, visit www.szczepantwardoch.pl/en/home.

Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish literature, including books by Lidia Ostałowska, Filip Springer, and Małgorzata Szejnert. A native of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he studied modern languages at University College London and international studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He spent five years as Literature and Humanities Curator at the Polish Cultural Institute New York. He is a winner of the Asymptote Close Approximations prize and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship.