Bolesław Prus and the Jews

Agnieszka Friedrich is a lecturer and academic at the University of Gdańsk. Her research focuses on Jewish issues in Polish literature and press between 1863 and 1914. She is the author of dozens of articles published in Polish and English in Studia Judaica, Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia, Polin, East European Jewish Affairs, Kesher, and Kwartalnik Historii Żydów. She is currently working on the manuscript Dreyfus Affair in Polish Press.

“Agnieszka Friedrich’s monograph demonstrates the extreme complexity of approaches to the so-called ‘Jewish question’ in nineteenth- and early twentieth century Poland (then still part of Tsarist Russia). Some modern critics, Friedrich argues, reach precipitate or even wrong conclusions by reading Prus’s fiction through a post-Holocaust lens; but those who read Prus in unequivocal black-and-white terms minimize the complexity of his work. Friedrich’s insightful and well-researched monograph is the first to fully evaluate Prus’s opinion of the Jews. As a specialist in Jewish issues in nineteenth-century Polish literature, she is well placed to evaluate contemporaneous understandings of the Jewish question in the context of Poland. … Friedrich’s useful and thorough study is recommended for any scholar of Polish–Jewish relations or literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

— Katarzyna Zechenter, University College London, Modern Language Review (October 2022: Vol. 117, No. 4)

“Originally published in Polish in 2008, this study is the first book-length work to consider the ‘Jewish Question’ as reflected in the works of the important Polish novelist Aleksander Głowacki (better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus). Prus is of particular interest not only because of his great popularity in the decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century but because his deliciously contrarian nature makes it impossible to pigeonhole him as ‘conservative,’ ‘progressive,’ or—perhaps more to the point for this study—judeophilic or antisemitic. Prus died in 1912, just before Polish-Jewish relations plunged into a dismal crisis from which, one may say with slight exaggeration, they never emerged. Praised and denounced in equal measure during his lifetime as ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-Jewish,’ Prus’s nuanced, humorous, and reality-based writings on the vexing ‘Jewish question’ receive their due in this well-researched book.”

—Theodore R. Weeks, Professor of History, Russia and Eastern Europe, Southern Illinois University