Konwicki, Tadeusz

Born June 22, 1926, in Nowa Wilejka. Polish writer.

During World War II, Konwicki served in a partisan detachment in 1944–45. He began to publish in 1946, and one of his early works, the novella Construction (1950), describes the building of the Nowa Huta metallurgical combine. The novel Power (1954) deals with social and political transformations in People’s Poland and the novel Quagmire (1956, written in 1948) portrays the partisans in the Armia Krajowa (Home Army). Moral and philosophical problems are treated in the novels A Hole in the Sky (1959; Russian translation, 1961), A Contemporary Dream Book (1963; Russian translation, 1966), The Ascension (1967), The Man-Beast Vampire (1969), and Nothing or Nothing (1971). Konwicki is also a film director and has made several films based on his own screenplays, published in the collection Last Day of Summer (1966). He won the State Prize of the Polish People’s Republic in 1950 and again in 1954.