The Doll (New York Review Books Classics)

ISBN: 159017383X

Author: Prus, Boleslaw

Condition: New

Boleslaw Prusis often compared to Chekhov, and Pruss 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. Pruss fatally flawed hero is Wokulski, a successful businessman who yearns for recognition from Polands decadent aristocracy and falls desperately in love with the highborn, glacially beautiful Izabela.Wokulskis 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 Baranczak writes in his introduction, at once an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story . . . , a still topical diagnosis of societys ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man."