There is a large shadow which hangs over Twardoch’s novel, set in Warsaw in 1937. That shadow is, por supuesto, the imminence of war, the arrival of the Nazis, the construction of the ghetto and the holocaust. The protagonist of the novel, Jakub Szapiro, is Jewish, as are his family, his neighbourhood, his friends and partners and criminal associates. He doesn’t know, although the reader does, that this whole world is on the point of implosion, and all the petty disputes and conflicts which he is caught up in, with his enemies, partners, wife, family and lovers, will soon be rendered obsolete. This shadow creates its own dramatic tension, which the narrative emphasises by including flash-forwards to Jakub living a sad lonely life in Tel Aviv, decades later. The novel itself is something of a rip-roaring read, full of violence, sex, criminals and betrayal and feels ripe for the Netflix adaptation that subsequently occurred. There is a subsidiary layer which has to do with the history of Poland itself. Jakub’s contacts go to the very top, and his dealings with the far right and its political machinations has echoes of Poland’s recent history.
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