Entanglement

Praise for Entanglement:

“An exquisite contemporary crime story. Polish literature boasts a real master.”—Jerzy Pilch, author of The Mighty Angel

“A tightly plotted mystery novel, dark humor and contemporary Warsaw perfectly rendered.”—Przekrój Magazine

The morning after a group psychotherapy session in a Warsaw monastery, Henry Talek is found dead, a roasting spit stuck in one eye.

Public prosecutor Teodor Szacki, world-weary, suffering from bureaucratic exhaustion and marital ennui, feels that life has passed him by. But this case changes everything. Because of it he meets Monika Grzelka, a young journalist whose charms prove difficult to resist, and he discovers the frightening power of certain esoteric therapeutic methods. The shocking videos of the sessions lead him to an array of possible scenarios. Could one of the patients have become so absorbed by his therapy role-playing that he murdered Telak? Szacki’s investigation leads him to an earlier murder, before the fall of Communism.

And why is the Secret Police suddenly taking an interest in all this? As Szacki uncovers each piece of the puzzle, facts emerge that he’d be better off not knowing, for his own safety.

Zygmunt Miloszewski, born in Warsaw in 1975, is an editor currently working for Newsweek. His first novel, The Intercom, was published in 2005 to high acclaim. Entanglement followed in 2007, and the author is now working on screenplays based on The Intercom and Entanglement as well as on a sequel to the latter, also featuring Teodor Szacki.

Vicious psychotherapy, a murder and a suicide. Mayhem in Warsaw for a world-weary State Prosecutor.

Publishers Weekly

Miloszewski takes an engaging look at modern Polish society in this stellar first in a new series starring Warsaw prosecutor Teodor Szacki. Analyst Cezary Rudzki, the leader of a group therapy session, uses the innovative Family Constellation approach, in which each person pretends to be a relative of each other participant. When one of the four members of the group, Henryk Telak, turns up dead with a skewer through his eye, Szacki investigates. The victim's tragic circumstances--one child a suicide, another terminally ill--suggest to Szacki that a fellow patient got too absorbed in the role-playing and committed the murder as an expression of rage on the part of someone close to Telak. Szacki, who's undergoing a midlife crisis and has ambivalent feelings about his wife, considers an affair with a journalist hoping to get exclusive details on his inquiry. Readers will want to see more of the complex, sympathetic Szacki. (Aug.)

Born in Warsaw in 1975, Miloszewski is a reporter and editor currently working for Newsweek. His first novel, 'The Intercom', was published in 2005 to high acclaim. In 2006 he published his novel for young readers, 'The Adder Mountains', and in 2007 a crime novel 'Entanglement'. A sequel to the latter is under way. Antonia Lloyd-Jones is well known for her translations from the Polish of novels by Pawel Huelle such as Mercedes-Benz (shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Award 2006) and Castorp (shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Award 2007). Other authors she has translated include Ryszard Kapuscinski and Olga Tokarczuk.