From acclaimed biographer and filmmaker Jane Rogoyska, Kozłowski: a new novel that explores the tragedy of the Katyń Massacre and the pain of post-war Polish exile
Kozłowski tells the story of a young Polish army doctor whose life is changed forever by a single, mysterious event: the disappearance, in April 1940, of 4,000 of his comrades from a Soviet interrogation camp in Starobelsk, Ukraine. Exiled in post-war London, Kozłowski builds a new life, working to convince himself that the past cannot affect him. In reality, the past is the only place he longs to be. As the silence surrounding his lost comrades deepens, his attempts to submerge his feelings threaten to destroy him.
This is a novel about loss, memory and guilt, written in sparse and elegant prose; Zbyszek Kozłowski’s story echoes the experience of an entire generation displaced from their country and their past.
Jane Rogoyska
Educated at Cambridge University, writer and filmmaker Jane Rogoyska studied film direction in Leeds and Poland, going on to make a series of award-winning short films and working extensively as writer and director. She is the author of the acclaimed biography of the German photojournalist Gerda Taro, who died while reporting on the Spanish Civil War. Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa (Jonathan Cape 2013) is now in development as a feature film based on her own script. Jane continues to work across different media, on creative projects in film, theatre and radio including, in 2018, writing and presenting Still Here: a Polish Odyssey for BBC Radio 4, a documentary about Polish deportees to the USSR who settled in the UK after World War II.
Kozłowski
ISBN: 978-1-910688-73-1
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: 16 May 2019