Resumo de The Polish Complex - TADEUSZ KONWICKI

In The Polish Complex the narrator ? who has the
name Konwicki ? spends Christmas Eve waiting in line at a Warsaw jewellery store which is expecting a
delivery of rings. His fellow queuers are not as they seem. One claims to have
followed Konwicki around for several weeks in 1951 with orders to kill him
(part of a conflict within a WWII organization about which we learn little
more). A queue-jumping peasant woman turns out to be ultra-fashionably dressed
under her coat and kerchief. And then there''s a French anarchist, a terrorist,
some construction workers, a police agent provocateur, and more.

Our narrator''s mind is not entirely on his companions, however; even a heart
attack and an erotic encounter with a shop employee fail to focus him on the
here and now. His thoughts wander to politics and history and the state of Poland, as well
as to humanity''s place in the universe and his personal search for
transcendence. This never gets out of control, however: pretensions to grand
meaning are undercut by the narrator''s weaknesses and foibles, approaches to
tragedy by comic episodes, serious history by the interjection of cliches about
the Polish national character, and so forth.

A large part of The Polish Complex consists of embedded pieces,
some of which we have to suspect were unfinished works that Tadeusz Konwicki
happened to have lying around. The two largest are stories ? one of novella
length ? about Polish patriots during the 1863 uprising. And there''s a letter
from someone in hospital, written to a friend in the West and smuggled out by a
decent non-Party physician.

Despite the fractured narrative and the juggling of moods and perspectives, The
Polish Complex maintains a steady pacing and keeps us engaged. A problem
for foreign readers may be the assumed knowledge of Polish history, from the
1863 revolt to the status of Poland
as a Soviet satellite state in the 1970s. But this is perhaps what some want:
in one extended digression Konwicki bemoans being labeled a Polish writer
despite his aspirations to universalism.

How did it happen that I am an author of Polish books, good
or bad, but Polish?

In this case the book is unquestionably Polish as well as
remarkably good.

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