A Thousand Peaceful Cities

A comic gem, Jerzy Pilchs A Thousand Peaceful Cities takes place in 1963, in the latter days of the Polish post-Stalinist thaw. The narrator, Jerzyk (little Jerzy), is a teenager who is keenly interested in his father, a retired postal administrator, and his fathers closest friend, Mr. Tr?ba, a failed Lutheran clergyman, alcoholic, would-be Polish insurrectionist, and one of the wildest literary characters since Sternes Uncle Toby. One drunken afternoon, Mr. Tr?ba and the narrators nameless father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity: travel to distant Warsaw and assassinate the de facto Polish head of state, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party, W?adys?aw Gomu?kaassassinating Mao Tse-tung, after all, would be impractical. And they decide to involve Jerzyk in their scheme . . .