Review by Booklist Review
ldquo;Bruno Schulz was as anxious in life as he was undaunted in art," writes Balint as he delves into the mysteries of this not widely enough known Jewish Polish "master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction" and creator of visual art as refined in execution as it was shocking in its depiction of male subjugation to female power. Schulz was also a "self-effacing" schoolteacher, a romantic whose worshipful relationships with women didn't conform to social standards, and a self-described "citizen of the Republic of Dreams." Schulz's life, work, and complicated legacy, including fraught battles over the fate, meaning, and ownership of his censored work, parallel those of Kafka, the subject of Balint's previous book, Kafka's Last Trial (2018). When the Nazis occupied Schulz's hometown, Drohobych, one particularly sadistic officer forced Schulz to make propagandistic art and art for residences seized by the Germans until another Nazi shot the artist dead in the street. When a mural of Schulz's was found in a pantry in 2001 by German documentary filmmakers, a geopolitically complicated tug of war ensued among various governments and Israel's Yad Vashem. Balint vividly, insightfully, and affectingly casts light on long-shadowed Schulz and his startlingly original work, composing a freshly enlightening, harrowing, and invaluable chapter in the perpetual history of genocide and the courage and transcendence of artists.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cultural critic Balint (Kafka's Last Trial) probes the inner world of Polish Jewish artist and writer Bruno Schulz (1892--1942) in this spellbinding biography. Raised in Drohobycz, Poland (present-day Ukraine), Schulz gained entry into Eastern Europe's thriving literary and art circles only to have his career cut short when the Red Army invaded Poland in 1939. During the subsequent Nazi occupation, Schulz's erotic drawings, depicting "masochistic scenes... of men groveling at women's feet," attracted the attention of SS officer Felix Landau, who made Schulz his "personal Jew"--entitling the artist to protection and extra rations--and forced him to paint a series of murals on the walls of Landau's villa and other buildings. Though Schulz's friends in Warsaw conspired to help him escape Drohobycz, he was shot dead on a street corner in November 1942. Balint describes how Schulz's "phantasmagoric" stories influenced Isaac Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, and others, and details the international furor when Israeli agents pried Schulz's murals from the walls of Landau's former villa and sent them to Yad Vashem for display. Throughout, Balint's dogged research and lucid analyses shed light on the interplay between Schulz's psychology and his art. It's a fascinating portrait of the artist in extremis. Illus. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A well-informed consideration of the life and legacy of the Polish Jewish writer and artist who died during World War II. Often compared to Kafka in background, "father fixations," and "self-sacrificial devotion to literature," Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) toiled mostly in obscurity as an art teacher in Drohobych, Poland (now Ukraine)--except among those intellectuals who had read his two volumes of stories published in the mid-1930s, Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. The books were highly praised for their flights of meteoric prose as well as morbid sensuality and undercurrents of masochism. Balint, author of Kafka's Last Trial, awarded the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, describes Schulz's work in his own words and those of critics. The author's prose is sensuous and often lavish: "Schulz sought in his art a confirmation of his existence; art for him was something sacerdotal….In time he became inextricably bound up with his art and its disinhibiting effect." Largely confined to his hometown, which featured a diverse mix of Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian ethnicities in a region of shifting nationalities, Schulz and his fellow Jews were caught in the vise grip between the invading Soviets and the Nazis in 1939. During his last tortuous months, he was employed by Felix Landau, a sadistic SS officer, to paint portraits for fellow Gestapo officers as well as a series of fairy-tale murals. On Nov. 19, 1942, Schulz was shot in the streets, and different accounts of the murder have been subject to "the polyphony of memory." Balint's narration of Schulz's life is brief compared to his fascinating discussion of the controversy surrounding the discovery of his murals in 2001 and their spiriting away to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial by Israeli agents. In this incisive portrait, Balint also delves into the enormous influence of Schulz on Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Jonathan Safran Foer, among many others writers. A poignant, passionate revisiting of an important literary and artistic voice. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
