"Documentary prose". Fragments of the book “East of the Arbat” by the famous Polish writer and journalist Hanna Krall with an introduction by the Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygieł, who notes the journalist’s ability to “confuse her tracks”: to hold back precisely to the extent that, without giving the censor a reason to ban publication, at the same time time transparently hinted to the reader at the true state of affairs in the USSR, where Hana and her husband worked as correspondents for Polish newspapers in the 60s. last century. What are these essays about? About a Polish village in Siberia, about chess in the USSR, about Odessa and the search for the address of the Benny Krik prototype, and so on. However, the last essay of the recently republished book - “Man and Woman” - was written in the early 90s: this is a story from the life of the Gulag, and in it everything is called by its proper name, since times have changed... Translation by K. Staroselskaya.

Foreign literature, 2016 No. 08