In the early 1900s, Eliza Orzeszkowa was repeatedly a top contender, with Leo Tolstoy, for the Nobel Prize in literature. Neither won. Nevertheless, her novels have remained classics of Polish literature, and her most famous, On the Niemen, is not only an unusual love story, but is strikingly relevant today. Unhappy after being abandoned by her fiance, Justyna, an impoverished young woman who lives in a manor house belonging to relatives, desires a life of greater usefulness. While being pursued by a wealthy aristocrat and by her former love - now married - she meets Jan, a man of lower...
In the early 1900s, Eliza Orzeszkowa was repeatedly a top contender, with Leo Tolstoy, for the Nobel Prize in literature. Neither won. Nevertheless, h...
Natalia Lanska, formidable Polish pianist, is dead. No one is really sorrowing, except maybe her granddaughter Hania, whose own career as a concert artist never took off due to a terrible weight problem. Feeling unwanted, Hania arrives in Warsaw for the funeral hoping for a warm welcome from her relatives. Instead, they saddle her with their appalling children, decamp, and refuse to return. Hania's situation is at first improved and then complicated when a neighbor--the very correct, very austere descendant of an old Polish family--asks her to proofread an amateur history project. Hania sets...
Natalia Lanska, formidable Polish pianist, is dead. No one is really sorrowing, except maybe her granddaughter Hania, whose own career as a concert ar...