Novel
Noce i dnie
Not translated into English
Maria Dąbrowska · 1934
Synopsis
Bogumił Niechcic and Barbara Ostrzeńska, both from ruined landowning families, marry. He, an active man in harmony with life, takes over the management of the Serbinów estate, which belongs to an absentee owner; she, more educated, more ambitious, anxious, keeps the memory of another love and is never satisfied with her lot. The novel follows their ordinary days, the birth and growth of their children, then their daughter Agnieszka, in a Poland transformed by history.
Context
Written in the twenties and first given in fragments in the press, the novel appeared with Jakub Mortkowicz in Warsaw in four volumes, Bogumił i Barbara, Wieczne zmartwienie, Miłość and Wiatr w oczy; the first, printed in 1931, bears the date 1932, and the last appeared in 1934. The author had first thought of calling it Les Soucis de Madame Barbara, and during the work reduced the number of the couple's children from five to three. Jerzy Antczak made a film and a television series from it in 1975.
Who it is for
Four volumes, nearly eighteen hundred pages, a slow narrative attentive to ordinary days. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by critics as the best epic novel of the interwar period; it won the author the national literature prize in 1933.
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