Self-Portrait with Woman

Amid the spiritual exhaustion of post-communist Poland, Szczpiorski's everyman Polish hero, Kamil, sums up and relives all his romances in a last-ditch effort to find redemption. A survivor of the tyrannies of Hitler and Stalin, as well as of the more banal totalitarianism that followed, Kamil, as is revealed through the extensive portions of the novel that he narrates, has cuckolded a secret policeman, carried on an affair while in prison during the Solidarity movement and generally loved unwisely and inadequately. Now his final chance arrives in the form of a Mrs. Ruth Gless, a Swiss sociologist interviewing him for a documentary archive commissioned by Radio Geneva. Underneath his bluff irony and smothering sarcasm, Kamil turns out to be a romantic in remission, one who has internalized a guilt about universal human cruelty and about being unequal to the era's challenges. Szczpiorski (The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman) skillfully melds Kamil's conversations and monologues with vivid scenes of confrontation, and with nightmares and guilt-ridden hallucinations, all the while maintaining just the right narrative tempo. Although not quite as compelling as the author's previous works, this novel offers moving reflections on love as seen in history's window. (Jan.)