At the trade fair's Polish Booth at the Javits Center in New York City, Poland's premiere detective novelist, Marek Krajewski, presents his series of five Chandleresque novels set in pre-war Wrocław - then named Breslau - that Melville House has begun publishing in the U.S. in Danusia Stok's translations. Death in Breslau was published in September 2012, and The End of the World in Breslau premiered in April 2013.
Krajewski joins in a reading session with other crime authors at the Mysterious Bookshop in downtown Manhattan and at Book Court in Brooklyn. At the BookExpo convention, the writer signs books at the Polish Booth and participates in a panel organised by the Polish Cultural Institute on the sometimes-difficult relationship between translators and editors.
While the BookExpo America is open primarily to industry professionals, the Polish Cultural Institute NY and the Book Institute aim to bring more books by Polish authors to U.S. bookstores by supporting literary translation from Polish into English, and by facilitating trade in literary rights between Poland and the U.S.
Set in 1933 after the Nazis took power in the city, Death in Breslau starts with with a gruesome find: two young women, murdered on a train, scorpions writhing on their bodies, an indecipherable note in an apparently oriental language nearby. Uncovering the truth is no straightforward matter for police inspector Eberhard Mock.
The city is in the grip of the Gestapo, and has become a place where spies are everywhere, where corrupt ministers torture confessions from Jewish merchants, and where Freemasons guard their secrets with blackmail and violence. And as Mock and his assistant plunge into the city’s squalid underbelly, the case takes on a dark twist of the occult when the mysterious note seems to indicate a ritual killing with roots in the Crusades …
The End of the World in Breslau, Krajewski second novel to come out from Melville House Press, has also gathered enthusiastic reviews, with The Independent claiming it is:
As noir as they get. This complex and atmospheric thriller will find many fans. […] piquant period detail saturate[s] the pages, and push these books into the upper echelons of literary crime. Krajewski’s lacerating narrative performs the key function of the skilful novelist: providing an entry into a world far from our own.
Marek Krajewski (born 1966) made his literary debut in 1999 with Death in Breslau, the first of his retro crime-novel series set in the pre-war German city of Breslau, featuring Crime Commissioner Eberhard Mock. A classical linguist by training, Krajewski teaches at the university in Wrocław, the same city his fiction is set in. Krajewski's books are filled with delightful scholarly arcana, giving his otherwise Chandleresque, womanizing, boozing protagonist an element of Sherlock Holmes-style sophistication. They also portray a world of pre-war decadence and a sense of alienation that critics have compared to Kafka and the Expressionists.
Krajewski won the prestigious Passport award of the news magazine Polityka in 2005, having won the Polish "Large Caliber" award for crime fiction in 2003 for The End of the World in Breslau. His novels have been translated into 14 languages as of 2012.
Details of events with Marek Krajewski:
- Tuesday, 28th of May, 6 pm
The Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren Street, New York, NY
Crime fiction reading with Marek Krajewski, Maurizio DeGiovanni, Jesseca Hagedorn and others.
Free and open to the public.
- Thursday, 30th of May, 7 pm
Book Court 163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY
Crime fiction reading with Marek Krajewski, Maurizio DeGiovanni, Jesseca Hagedorn and others
Free and open to the public.
- Friday, 31st of May, 1 pm
Marek Krajewski: Book Signing
BooxExpo America
Booth #1845, Javits Center
Free with BEA Admission
- Friday, 31st of May, 3:30 pm
The Translator and the Editor: A fraught relationship
BooxExpo America Room 1E07, Javits Center
With distinguished translators Mary Ann Caws (French) and Susan Bernofsky (German), editors Vicky Wilson (Knopf) and Chad Post (Open Letter Books and threepercent blog), and writer Marek Krajewski
Editor: Paulina Schlosser, source: polishculture-nyc.org, http://www.mhpbooks.com, press release, 20.05.2013