Effectively a “non-person,” it was forbidden even to mention his name in journalism or academia. Though the realistic ethos of his fiction differs artistically from a writer like Vladimir Nabokov, he shared a similar uncompromising attitude toward Communist totalitarianism, which led to his works being banned for forty-five years in post-war Poland. Senate Committee on the subject.) In 1942 he witnessed the Ponary slaughter of Jews by German SS and their collaborators, which he recounted in a later book. He was present at the first excavations of the 1940 Katyn massacre, at one of the three sites where the Soviets had murdered, in total, more than 21,000 Poles, and he produced the first written accounts of the atrocities. Who was Józef Mackiewicz? Though the vagaries of history and fame might suggest otherwise, he is by no means an obscure figure and in fact he possessed a Zelig-like capacity to pop up at crucial moments as a witness to disaster. Considered in this light, he is quite simply the most intriguing new writer I have encountered in years. and most of his work is untranslated or out of print, he might as well be seen as a new writer, as far as Americans are concerned.
Given the unfortunate fact that Józef Mackiewicz is generally unknown in the U.S. This excellent novel, first published by a Polish exile in 1955, is consistently engaging and, for its aching, visceral power, still feels fresh. Ezra Pound’s observation that “literature is news that STAYS news” certainly applies to Road to Nowhere (Henry Regnery Company, 382 pages).
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