Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Torino, Einaudi
Description
The Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek's award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.
User reviews
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
I loved Kafka, but this is almost better in a lot of regards. Each story works on its own, but taken together each morsel adds up to a sumptuous meal. To think - I've been in Poland all these years, yet this is the first time I've been exposed to Mrozek. That doesn't put me in a very good light,
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but at least now my oversight has been somewhat rectified. Show Less
Language
Original language
Polish
Original publication date
1957
Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1958
ISBN
880611364X / 9788806113643