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Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston
The first US edition of a famous Polish novel, originally published in 1912, which vividly portrays an inchoate country's uprising (186364) against its Russian oppressors. The setting is a manor temporarily abandoned by its wealthy owners, whose beautiful ward (Salomea) protects and nurses back to health a severely wounded Polish soldier (who is himself an aristocrat). The accidental intertwining of their destinies, and their inevitable separation, are delineated with almost operatic intensity in an impressively dramatic (if more than occasionally grandiose) symbolic exploration of the ambiguities of both political allegiance and internecine class distinction. Zeromski (18641925), who seems a strange combination of passionate nationalist reformer and Dostoevskian mystic, looks like a writer very much worth reviving.

The Faithful Riverconstitutes a major achievement in European literature. Its compelling plot integrates political, intelectual, and romantic themes; and in its portrayal of the human dimension of war and its juxtaposition of the personal and political, it speaks directly to the contemporary reader.

About the Author:
Stefan żeromski (1864-1925) was the leading Polish novelist of his generation and is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest writers his country has ever produced. Czesław Miłosz has called him "the conscience of Polish literature". His work has been translated into dozens of languages, and in the 1920s was contender for the Nobel Prize.