Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Doll

The Doll

Prus, Boleslaw
Baranczak, Stanislaw
Welsh, David

Paperback

Series: New York Review Books Classics

RomanceHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $29.95

ISBN10: 159017383X
ISBN13: 9781590173831
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: Feb 8 2011
Pages: 704
Weight: 1.49
Height: 1.44 Width: 5.11 Depth: 7.94
Language: English
Boleslaw Prus is often compared to Chekhov, and Prus's masterpiece might be described as an intimate epic, a beautifully detailed, utterly absorbing exploration of life in late-nineteenth-century Warsaw, which is also a prophetic reckoning with some of the social forces--imperialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism among them--that would soon convulse Europe as never before. But The Doll is above all a brilliant novel of character, dramatizing conflicting ideas through the various convictions, ambitions, confusions, and frustrations of an extensive and varied cast. At the center of the book are three men from three different generations. Prus's fatally flawed hero is Wokulski, a successful businessman who yearns for recognition from Poland's decadent aristocracy and falls desperately in love with the highborn, glacially beautiful Izabela. Wokulski's story is intertwined with those of the incorrigibly romantic old clerk Rzecki, nostalgic for the revolutions of 1848, and of the bright young scientist Ochocki, who dreams of a future full of flying machines and other marvels, making for a book of great scope and richness that is, as Stanislaw Barańczak writes in his introduction, at once an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story . . ., a still topical diagnosis of society's ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man.


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