Confidential

The darkly comic tale of three generations of a Jewish family, from one of Poland’s most renowned contemporary authors

Confidential follows on the success of acclaimed photographer, psychologist, and writer Mikolaj Grynberg’s highly acclaimed short story collection, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To, which was a finalist for numerous awards, including Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award in Prose for Sean Gasper Bye’s excellent translation.

This powerful new novel is a darkly comic portrait of a Jewish family in today’s Poland, struggling to express their love for one another in the face of a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. The grandfather is a doctor, a Holocaust survivor who has now vowed to live only for pleasure. His son, born at the start of the war, becomes a doctor like his father, but finds himself emotionally unable to attend the medical conferences in Germany, despite the benefit it would give his career. The mother is loving but firm, though she has a secret habit of attending strangers’ funerals so that she can cry.

A masterpiece of concision, Confidential expands on one of the stories in I’d Like to Say Sorry . . ., tackling themes of memory and care, trauma and memory, as well as enduring anti-Semitism, with unforgettable power, emotional complexity, and Grynberg’s trademark black humor.

Mikolaj Grynberg is a photographer, author, and trained psychologist. He has published three collections: Survivors of the 20th Century, I Accuse Auschwitz, and The Book of Exodus. I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To (The New Press), his first work of fiction, was a finalist for the Nike, Poland’s top literary prize. He lives in Poland.