Mentzel, Zbigniew 1951–

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Mentzel, Zbigniew 1951–

PERSONAL:

Born 1951, in Poland; immigrated to London, England, c. 1981. Education: Graduate of Warsaw University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland, assistant professor; Puls (publishing house), London, England, editor; Tydognik Powszechny, columnist.

WRITINGS:

Pod Kreska: Ostatnie Kwartal;asy PRL (nonfiction; title means ‘In the Red: The Last Months of the People's Republic of Poland"), Puls (London, England), 1990.

Niebezpieczne Narzeędzie W Ustach (short stories; title means ‘The Dangerous Instrument in the Mouth"), Sl;asowo/obraz terytoria (Gdansk, Poland), 2001.

Wśród Znajomych: O Różnych Ludziach Mądrych, Zacnych, Interesujących I O Tym, Jak Czasy Swoje Urabiali, Znak Publishers (Kraków, Poland), 2004.

Wszystkie Jezyki Swiata (novel; title means ‘All the Languages of the World"), Znak Publishers (Kraków, Poland), 2005.

Editor of collected works of Leszek Kol;asakowski.

SIDELIGHTS:

Well received in Poland, Zbigniew Mentzel's first novel, Wszystkie Jezyki Swiata ("All the Languages of the World"), explores the nature of language and the difficulties of communication. Its action occurs during one day, January 17, 1997—several years after the end of communist rule in Poland and the anniversary of Warsaw's ‘liberation’ by Soviet forces near the end of World War II. The narrator and protagonist, Hintz, is a seemingly ordinary middle-aged man who describes the events of this day and reminisces, through various flashbacks, about his childhood and youth. At the same time, he is eager to follow the day's stock market activity to see if the shares he bought the day before with his life savings will rise, as he so fervently hopes. As Hintz narrates the mundane activities of his day, he remembers his mother's disappointments in life and in him for failing to live up to her dreams, and he ponders his frustration with himself for succumbing to writer's block. Thinking of his family's inability to communicate, he realizes that he will never know the whole truth about them because they lacked the ability to say what was most important about their lives and their real selves. As described on the Znak Publishers Web site, ‘Wszystkie Jezyki Swiata is a novel written against a bogus consciousness which hinders us from articulating the truth of our experiences.’ Anna Spyra, reviewing the novel for World Literature Today, observed that the book succeeds as a ‘meditation on the nature of language and the mystery of human life."