Rondo

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Written in the late 1970s before the author's critically acclaimed set of memoirs, A Warsaw Diary and Paris/New York , this uncompromising piece of fiction attempts to describe the ``objective truth'' about the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and its tragic aftermath. Narrator Tom is ostensibly writing a polemic in response to an article in a literary journal that described, he feels erroneously, his own activities as a WW II resistance fighter. But the book doubles as a reflection on the fortunes of a generation who came of age during the war. Reputedly, Tom is the illegitimate son of a famous Polish general, which gives him a certain cachet among his peers and inevitably leads him to abandon his promising career as a lawyer to join the Polish Home Army at the onset of the war. Ironically, it is his participation in the resistance movement that leads him later to be branded a ``subversive'' and jailed by the Communists. He also has a love affair with a mysterious tormented actress--the book's dominant storyline. Eschewing theatrics, Brandys presents the war years for the most part as banal, punctuated by acts of senseless violence; lethargic pacing and lengthy philosophical digressions detract from this otherwise splendid attempt to portray the lives of a displaced generation. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Purportedly, this novel is a letter to a magazine correcting and revising an account of the nearly accidental creation of a Polish wartime underground cadre and its growth to a considerable political and military force. What the narrator's book-length ``letter'' more significantly reveals, however, is his own tormented progress toward moral and emotional maturity. From a dreamlike alienation, Tom edges toward awareness and responsibility. Along the way, even as he carries out covert anti-German missions, he must wrest free from an obsessive passion for a mad (and maddening) actress whose love lies elsewhere. Complex discussions with sharply etched characters--about theater, religion, politics, love--counterpoint the action and compel attention to the stresses of selfhood, especially during times of political catastrophe. Rondo is not always easy to read, but it may prove impossible to forget.-- Arthur Waldhorn, City Coll., CUNY