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Imprint: Penguin Classics
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Published: 06/05/2010
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ISBN: 9780141193045
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Length: 176 Pages
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Dimensions: 198mm x 10mm x 129mm
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Weight: 134g
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RRP: £9.99
The Elephant
The Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek's award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.
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Imprint: Penguin Classics
-
Published: 06/05/2010
-
ISBN: 9780141193045
-
Length: 176 Pages
-
Dimensions: 198mm x 10mm x 129mm
-
Weight: 134g
-
RRP: £9.99
Reviews
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Extraordinary . . . Mrozek's brief fables are something like Kafka's stories, but they're funnier
Spectator
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The satiric intent is unambiguous, and offers hope to the oppressed mind...so deft and so piercing
Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
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[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries.
CJ Schüler, Independent on Sunday
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This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic.
Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
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I urge you to go and read them.
Adam Thirlwell, New Statesman
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This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'.
Stephen Vizinczey, Daily Telegraph
