Juljan Stryjkowski

STRYJKOWSKI, JULJAN (originally Passover Stark; 1905– ), Polish novelist. Born in Stryj, Galicia, Stryjkowski joined a Zionist youth movement as a boy, but later became a Communist. In 1939 he fled to the USSR, where he remained during World War II, returning to Poland in 1946. He was active in postwar Polish literary life and was a co-editor of the literary monthly Twórczość.

Stryjkowski's first major work was Bieg do Fragala ("Run to Fragala," 1951), which depicted the life of a poverty-stricken village in Calabria, Italy. A stage version was performed in Wrocław (Breslau) by the Polish National Theater in 1953. This was followed by Pożegnanie z Italji ("Farewell to Italy," 1954); Głosy w ciemności ("Voices in the Dark," 1955), a novel about Jewish life in his native Stry before World War I; Czarna Róźa ("The Black Rose" 1962); and the story Imię własne ("First Name," 1961). A later novel, Austeria (1966), portrayed the Jews of a town in eastern Galicia at the outbreak of World War I. Stryjkowski's works were translated into many languages and the writer himself translated works by the French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Russian writer Leonid Maximovich Leonov.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.