SCHULZ, Bruno. Cinnamon Shops & Other Stories. Trans. from the Polish by Celina Wieniewska. London: MacGibbon & Kee. 1963. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in red to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by the author. A very good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the top edge slightly spotted with some mild foxing to endpapers, else clean. The dust jacket unclipped (18s net), sharp, with a few very short nicks and light rubbing.
Collects thirteen stories from the Austrian-born Polish Jew, whose tragic demise might have desisted a household name. Schulz lived almost his entire life in a quiet Polish town. A master draughtsman, he taught children arts and crafts while regaling stories unwritten. After a chance meeting with Zofia Nalkowska, a distinguished novelist in Warsaw, Schulz sent her some of his stories and these were published in Poland in 1934. He was sent a copy of Kafka’s The Trial—apparently an influence on his own writing—and immediately got to work on a translation. One more story collection was published before the Nazis came. Together with other Jews from the area, he was confined to the ghetto where he was reportedly protected by an SS officer who liked his drawings. Sadly, when he was being escorted to the Aryan quarter of the camp by this protector, another SS officer shot Schulz dead. It’s believed he was working on a first novel, but this is now lost. Such was the capability of his prose, commonplace and extraordinary, praise has been shone via odes from works by China Mieville, Roberto Bolaño, Cynthia Ozick, and others. Scarce.
SCHULZ, Bruno. Cinnamon Shops & Other Stories. Trans. from the Polish by Celina Wieniewska. London: MacGibbon & Kee. 1963. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in red to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by the author. A very good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square, the top edge slightly spotted with some mild foxing to endpapers, else clean. The dust jacket unclipped (18s net), sharp, with a few very short nicks and light rubbing.
Collects thirteen stories from the Austrian-born Polish Jew, whose tragic demise might have desisted a household name. Schulz lived almost his entire life in a quiet Polish town. A master draughtsman, he taught children arts and crafts while regaling stories unwritten. After a chance meeting with Zofia Nalkowska, a distinguished novelist in Warsaw, Schulz sent her some of his stories and these were published in Poland in 1934. He was sent a copy of Kafka’s The Trial—apparently an influence on his own writing—and immediately got to work on a translation. One more story collection was published before the Nazis came. Together with other Jews from the area, he was confined to the ghetto where he was reportedly protected by an SS officer who liked his drawings. Sadly, when he was being escorted to the Aryan quarter of the camp by this protector, another SS officer shot Schulz dead. It’s believed he was working on a first novel, but this is now lost. Such was the capability of his prose, commonplace and extraordinary, praise has been shone via odes from works by China Mieville, Roberto Bolaño, Cynthia Ozick, and others. Scarce.
