Mother Departs
Synopsis
A unique mix of prose and poetry, of the joy of life and the agony of loss. Różewicz creates a complex portrait of his mother Stefania and of her indelible influence on her extraordinary family. Here is an artist attempting to give form, even meaning, to life – and death.
Author's Biography
Tadeusz Różewicz (b. 1921) is Poland's foremost living writer, a finalist for the 2003 Popescu Prize, the 2008 National Book Critics Award, and the 2012 Griffin Prize. In 2007 he was awarded the European Prize for Literature. Mother Departs won the Nike Prize, Poland's most prestigious literary award, in 2000.
Reviews
One of the great European poets of the twentieth century’ Seamus Heaney
‘Tadeusz Różewicz is a great anti-poet whose poems have the clipped, intense feel of phrases exchanged in wartime... Though he would not agree, he has succeeded in writing poetry after Auschwitz.’ Tom Paulin
Reader Comments
I would like to thank you Tatiana for giving me this book as a gift. Therefore I was able to move to my country one more time and rediscover Poland. Touching, heartbreaking.
Very personal, very touching.
One of the most universal books I've ever read. About a difficult aspect of a child-mother relationship - between a son (in a troubled country, in a troubled society) and his mother (born in an even more troubled country and in a more troubled society). Very strong, very sharp, extremely creative. Full of sense of life and humour in spite of the tragic aspect or rather final point of it - the author's mother's death. I was personally involved in staging its fragments at Southbank Centre in May 2013 - to launch it - and found it as one of my most favourite projects ever. Because of the text, first of all. It's got some weaker moments due to the personal differences - but it only makes this book stronger. It's not fiction where you can polish everything. It's a polished non-fiction, where you can do something but have no omnipotent powers. I loved seeing the mechanism of this non-perfect authority and narrative.
Heartbreaking, brave and tender.
A beautiful story, undoubtedly worth reading
Rozewicz is one of Poland's major literary figures and this is probably his most personal book. To me it was revelatory is describing conditions of life in Poland in the aftermath of over the century of the partitions by the foreign powers and the First World War.
On the more personal level his relationship with his Mother is very moving.
Touching, universal, brave.
Touching, heartbreaking, beautiful. An unforgettable tribute to the author's mother. Wonderfully translated timeless piece of literature.
A beautiful clear and moving translation of a book that helps the reader make sense of a senseless century. A major work of literature and memory.
An outstanding translation which takes its place as an independent work of literature. Andrew Visnevski