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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly:
A medieval outbreak of witch-burning and anti-Semitism provides the basis for Polish novelist Szczypiorski's ( The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman ) stunning political allegory of the ever-present danger of totalitarianism. In 1461, after losing a fifth of its population to plague and famine, the French town of Arras descends into barbarism. Lechery, looting and book-burning give way to greater violence as the townspeople find scapegoats in Jews and women, slaughtering the former as agents of Satan, the latter as witches. The PEN Club Award-winning author depicts this historical episode through the eyes of the guilt-ridden Jan, a Christian intellectual who participates in the mass hysteria but later escapes the herd mentality after he finds himself suspected of heresy. Jan recoils from his mentor, Father Albert, a proto-fascist demagogue, but when his other role model, David, Bishop of Utrecht, absolves all citizens of their sins, Jan recognizes the horrifying consequences of unquestioning acceptance of authority. This resonant story is a timely meditation on crimes committed in the name of religion and on the misplaced faith the ruled place in their rulers. The translation preserves the pungent medieval atmosphere, evoking a mindset that, the author implies, is very much alive today.

From Kirkus Reviews:
Szczypiorski (The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, 1990) reaches back to an anti-Semitic persecution in 15th-century Brabant for this allegory, first published in Poland in 1970, of the seductive appeal of totalitarianism. Three years after a plague in 1458 wiped out a fifth of its inhabitants, the Burgundian town of Arras is plunged into political frenzy by the death of a horse after its owner was allegedly cursed by his Jewish neighbor Tselus. Arrested and interrogated, Tselus kills himself before charges can be preferred, but the townspeople, seized by rabid anti-Semitism, proceed to rob, exile, and kill not only the local Jews but anyone who expresses sympathy for them, offers criticism of the new orthodoxy of hysteria, or, finally, shows any threateningly aberrant behavior: feeding Jewish citizens, debauchery, conducting scientific dissections. The parallels with the rise of Fascism are obvious, but Szczypiorski, who's after something more subtle, focuses on the running debate between Albert, the holy elder who argues first that purging the town's Jewish presence doesn't purge its evil inclinations--and then, on his deathbed, that he sought to lead the town to freedom through an experience of "the bitterness of evil"--and the royal bastard Prince David, the absentee Bishop of Utrecht, who begins by speaking for rationality but ends by declaring a "Sunday of Forgiveness, Cancellation, and Forgetting" that will render the whole ugly episode null and void. The fulcrum of this debate is a lordly, sensitive student named Jan, who's torn between his loyalty to both Albert and David. Only after he himself is arrested on trumped-up charges does he find his concern for his own and the town's welfare colliding with the need for collective memory, however much in conflict it is with individual experience. But don't be put off by such an abstract summary: this is really a dramatic fable that looks back to Kafka's allegories, and behind them to Dostoyevsky's "Grand Inquisitor." --

Ingram:
In 1461, Jan enthusiastically participates in the persecution of the Jews and witches blamed for an outbreak of plague and famine, but the burgeoning violence threatens Jan himself as he faces choices that have allegorical links to contemporary issues. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap:
"In the spring of 1458, the town of Arras was visited by the disasters of plague and hunger. In the course of a month, nearly a fifth of the citizens lost their lives.

"For reasons that remain unclear, the famous Vauderie d'Arras took place in October of 1461. Jews and witches were subjected to cruel persecution; there were trials for supposed heresies, as well as an outbreak of looting and crime. It was three weeks before calm returned...."

With this historical tragedy at its core, A Mass for Arras explores the personal and political consequences of fear, fanaticism, and fascism in the story of Jan, a young member of the intelligentsia. Arrogantly pious and full of revolutionary zeal, Jan wholeheartedly participates in the torments inflicted on the "outsiders" in the name of moral and political righteousness. Yet when faced with escalating violence and, ultimately, his own downfall, he must choose between sincere commitment to the isolated village that adopted him and horror at a society gone mad.

A Mass for Arras addresses themes of freedom and responsibility, individualism and conformity, and memory and loss. It is a moving account of a young man's coming-of-age in a time of disease and death, a profound political allegory of life in an emergent totalitarian state, a chilling indictment of government-sponsored repression and societal complicity, and a cautionary tale about the tendency of history to repeat itself, whether in fifteenth-century France, postwar Poland, or somewhere still closer to our own time and place.

"Gripping and persuasive.... About the forces now raging in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, Mr. Szczypiorski seems to have shown uncanny prescience."--The New York Times Book Review

"Haunting, direct, and technically masterful."--New York Newsday

"The novel's philosophical sophistication and historical verisimilitude makes it far greater than mere allegory."--Boston Sunday Globe

"[Szczypiorski's] breadth of experience, and of suffering, is distilled into this remarkable book which, although it is allegorical in form and brimming with abstract ideas, pulsates with a very human vitality."--Sunday Telegraph (London)

"A thought-provoking meditation on the human tendency to find meaning in suffering by blaming others and to pervert ideals to base means.... Simply, elegantly, and yet with great power, Szczypiorski lays out the dangers of a worldview clearly reminiscent of Eastern Europe before the fall of communism."--Library Journal

"[Szczypiorski's] resonant story is a timely meditation on crimes committed in the name of religion and on the misplaced faith the ruled place in their rulers. The translation preserves the pungent medieval atmosphere, evoking a mindset that, the author implies, is very much alive today."--Publishers Weekly

"A fascinating and well-written parable about the horrors of totalitarianism and the combination of hysteria and indifference that allow it to metastasize."--Booklist

Andrzej Szczypiorski was born in Warsaw in 1924, where he lived at the time of his death in May 2000. He fought in the Resistance Movement during the German Occupation of Poland, took part in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and survived time in a concentration camp. Under the postwar regime, he published many novels, plays, and essays in the underground press, joined the opposition movement, was interned during the government crackdown, and helped found the Solidarity Congress of Polish culture. He was the author of The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman and the recipient of the PEN Club award for A Mass for Arras, which has been published to great international acclaim.

Richard Lourie is the translator of Andrei Sakharov's Memoirs and Czeslaw Milosz's Visions from San Francisco Bay. His own works include the novels The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin, First Loyalty, Zero Gravity and the true-crime account of a Russian serial killer, Hunting the Devil. He has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Nation.