Agata Tuszyńska
Poland
Agata Tuszyńska (1957) is a Polish writer. She is the daughter of a historian and a journalist. She has a doctorate in humanities. She taught literature and journalism. In writing, she deals with biography and literary reportage. Mixing historical and fictional, she published about twenty books, several of which became bestsellers.
Accused: Wiera Gran
Translation: Milica Mirkulovska
Vladislav Shpilman's story reached audiences around the world thanks to Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning "The Pianist“. That of the singer Wiera Gran is less well known. Wiera Gran is Poland's Marlene Dietrich. She was a beautiful, exotic pre-WWII singing star, accompanied on piano by Spielman himself. A favorite in the night clubs of Warsaw in the 30s, she continued to perform in the Warsaw ghetto (1941-1942). While the pianist became a hero after the war, allegedly smuggling weapons to the resistance, Gran was accused of collaborating with the fascists; branded a traitor, a "Gestapo whore", humiliated, imprisoned, eventually found innocent, but continued to be silenced as an artist. Basically, declared dead even before she died, until Agata Tuszyńska wrote this book. The former singer opened up to the writer and told her side of the story.
Bruno Schulz's fiancee
Translation: Milica Mirkulovska
A kind of biography of Bruno Schulz and a wonderful story about love, defeats and art, which once again proves to be more powerful than death. On the square in Drohobych, on November 19, 1942, Bruno Schulz was shot. A few years later, his books become works of epochal significance in world literature. The legend of the genius artist begins to grow. Schulz's successes after his death are followed by a woman, shrouded in mystery... Józefina Szelińska, Juna, his muse and the only woman to whom Bruno Schulz proposed marriage.
Why did Schultz never marry? Why exactly did he sign the Polish translation of Process by Franz Kafka, even though the translation was made by Szelińska? For what reasons did Juna not "fix" her life with another man? What fate befell The Messiahthe lost manuscript of Schulz's last novel?, are some of the themes of this original novel.