The Thickets - Paperback

by Józef Lobodowski (Author), Charles Kraszewski (Translator)

This novel is the first part of the Ukrainian Trilogy of Polish poet and novelist Józef Lobodowski. Written between 1955 and 1960, the action of the trilogy plays out, for the most part, in the Kuban areas of Russia. Here Ukrainian, Russian, and Cossack live alongside and interact with Tatar and Circassian; there was also a large influx of other nationalities subject to the Tsar, such as Armenians and Poles -- to which latter nation belongs Staś (Stanislaw), the main character of the trilogy.

Author Biography

Józef Lobodowski (1909-1988) was born into a Polish family at a time when the Polish state did not exist on the political map of Europe. Since 1795, the Third Partition of Poland, his homeland had been divided between the empires of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Lobodowski's life itself reflects the history of Poland in all its glory and wretchedness. The son of a colonel in the Tsarist army, he entered the world near Kaunas, in present-day Lithuania. Because of his father's career, he and his family moved to Lublin, then to Moscow, and then to the Kuban, the setting of his most famous works in prose. Lobodowski's life and writing embody the turbulence, resilience, and contradictions of modern Polish history.