In July my father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. The language is beautiful, even in translation: But these are the oddest, strangest, most fantastical, most unexpected - Each one begins like Proust, all reminiscence. The Street of Crocodiles is a collection of linked short stories about the protagonist’s childhood. Only what he’d already published remains. That meant that most of his friends were also killed by the Nazis, and his letters and unfinished works were lost without a trace. He wasn’t much of a traveler and had spent almost all his life in his home town. He died during the second World War, shot and killed by a Nazi while walking home to Drohobych Ghetto with a loaf of bread. He was a Polish writer from the provincial town of Drohobych, one of the great Polish-language stylists. Lots of readers I like have mentioned him: John Crowley, Cynthia Ozick, China Miéville, and many more. I’ve had Bruno Schulz on the periphery of my reading for a long time.
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