Welcome to Massolit Books & Café!
Massolit is an independent English-language bookstore, both used and new, located in Krakow's old town. We specialize in popular and academic books, most at significantly discounted prices. Browse on-line through our more than 20,000 titles, or better, visit us in person! We welcome customers to browse the shelves and read our books or periodicals in the café or in the furnished back rooms.
The Krakow Messenger: A Novel
by Kozelka, Andrew A. (A),
It is 1862. Young Count Adam Grabowski, a Pole brought up abroad after the 1830 Insurrection forced his parents into exile, visits Poland for the first time, summoned by a mysterious letter signed 'Scipio'. He soon finds himself pulled into the shadowy underworld of the secret 'National Government' as the nation once again heads into a futile war with its Russian occupiers. Entrusted with a secret mission of great importance to the Cause, the count is diverted into an adventure that has terrible consequences for himself, the movement's young leader, and all of Poland One of five finalists for the Kirkus Review Literary Award, short-listed for the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize, and based on a true story, The Krakow Messenger is a taut, finely detailed atmospheric thriller in the mode of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. It is also a searing portrait of an anti-hero who, in his fanatical drive to help his nation achieve independence at any cost, foreshadows the darkest aspects of the ideologies to come...
Read more The Krakow Messenger A Novel.
Primeval and Other Times
by Tokarczuk, Olga (A),
Tokarczuk's third novel, Primeval and Other Times was awarded the Koscielski Foundation Prize in 1997, which established the author as one of the leading voices in Polish letters. It is set in the mythical village of Primeval in the very heart of Poland, which is populated by eccentric, archetypical characters. The village, a microcosm of Europe, is guarded by four archangels, from whose perspective the novel chronicles the lives of Primeval's inhabitants over the course of the feral 20th century. In prose that is forceful and direct, the narrative follows Poland's tortured political history from 1914 to the contemporary era and the episodic brutality that is visited on ordinary village life. Yet Primeval and Other Times is a novel of universal dimension that does not dwell on the parochial. A stylized fable as well as epic allegory about the inexorable grind of time, the clash between modernity (the masculine) and nature (the feminine), it has been translated into most European languages. Tokarczuk has said of the novel: "I always wanted to write a book such as this. One that creates and describes a world. It is the story of a world that, like all things living, is born, develops, and then dies." Kitchens, bedrooms, childhood memories, dreams and insomnia, reminiscences, and amnesia — these are part of the existential and acoustic spaces from which the voices of Tokarczuk's tale come, her "boxes in boxes."
Read more Primeval and Other Times .
Fado
by Stasiuk, Andrzej (A),
In this delightful collection of essays—by turns wry and reflective, wistful and witty— contemporary Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk turns his attention to the villages and small towns of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, and of course his native Poland. Stasiuk travels to places no tourist would think of visiting, and in his characteristically lyrical prose, lays out his own unique and challenging perspective on the fascinating, unknown heart of Central Europe. He reminds us of the area’s extraordinarily rich cultural and ethnic makeup, explores its literature, and shows how its history is inscribed permanently in its landscapes. Above all, he describes with fascination how past, present, and future co-exist and intertwine along the highways and back roads of the region
Read more Fado .
The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Pilsudski's Poland, 1926-1935
by Plach, Eva (A),
The May 1926 coup d'etat in Poland inaugurated what has become known as the period of sanacja or "cleansing." The event has been explored in terms of the impact that it had on state structures and political styles. But for both supporters and opponents of the post-May regime, the sanacja was a catalyst for debate about Polish national identity, about citizenship and responsibility to the nation, and about postwar sexual morality and modern gender identities. The Clash of Moral Nations is a study of the political culture of interwar Poland, as reflected in and by the coup. Eva Plach shifts the focus from strictly political contexts and examines instead the sanacja's open-ended and malleable language of purification, rebirth, and moral regeneration. In tracking the diverse appropriations and manipulations of the sanacja concept, Plach relies on a wide variety of texts, including the press of the period, the personal and professional papers of notable interwar women activists, and the official records of pro-sanacja organizations, such as the Women's Union for Citizenship Work. The Clash of Moral Nations introduces an important cultural and gendered dimension to understandings of national and political identity in interwar Poland.
Read more The Clash of Moral Nations Cultural Politics in Pilsudski's Poland, 1926-1935.
Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880-1939
by Majewski, Karen (A),
DURING Poland's century-long partition and in the interwar period of Poland's reemergence as a state, Polish writers on both sides of the ocean shared a preoccupation with national identity. Polish-American immigrant writers revealed their persistent, passionate engagement with these issues, as they used their work to define and consolidate an essentially transnational ethnic identity that was both tied to Poland and independent of it. By introducing these varied and forgotten works into the scholarly discussion, Traitors and True Poles recasts the literary landscape to include the immigrant community's own competing visions of itself. The conversation between Polonia's creative voices illustrates how immigrants manipulated often difficult economic, social, and political realities to provide a place for and a sense of themselves. What emerges is a fuller picture of American literature, one vital to the creation of an ethnic consciousness. This is the first extended look at Polish-language fiction written by turn-of-the-century immigrants, a forgotten body of American ethnic literature. Addressing a blind spot in our understanding of immigrant and ethnic identity and culture, Traitors and True Poles challenges perceptions of a silent and passive Polish immigration by giving back its literary voice.
Read more Traitors and True Poles Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880-1939.
Temporary Break in Children's Readings on Sunday