Marek Krajewski

Marek Krajewski was born on 4 September 1966 in Breslau. Forty-four years on, he’s a solid fellow in his prime, and a very natty dresser, usually to be seen in immaculate attire and shiny shoes. He’s closely cropped on the cranium, though he sometimes has a few days’ stubble on the mandibles. There’s no doubting he’s a fan of carefully laid plans, of skeletons (in the fictional sense), who likes posing hypotheses and working out solutions.

He does have a tendency to commit the sin of anachronism quite knowingly, usually in circumstances where he is motivated by a party game or culinary over-indulgence. This is a crime he perpetrates both off his own bat, and also during and after literary events, on the principle that “finis coronat opus”.

His penchant for retro is evidenced by an avocation, connected with his profession, that also leaves its mark on the pages of his publications. Thus his preferences include language of a particular kind, but more of that later. In his youth he used to walk along the dubious Martin-Opitz-Strasse, heading in the direction of the no less infamous Zwingerstrasse. He took an active part in inter-courtyard battles, and then, like every good-and-bad lad, he would sit down to a game of chess with friends of the same ilk. Though he is happy to volunteer the information that, with a view to earning a living, he once performed the job of a gravedigger, rather than do his duty for the dead he chose to pursue an occupation at the headquarters of the former Polizeipresidium at 49 Schuhbrücke.

Moreover, this occurred in the days when at this address – by then 49 Szewska Street – one entered the Institute for Classical Philology and Ancient Culture. It was here that for some time he devoted himself to the reconstruction of written texts – and here we return to our earlier theme – in a language that, like it or not, is dead. The dissertation that gave him the grounds to use the title “doctor” was produced in 1999, and was on “The Prosody of Greek Loanwords in Plautus”. Despite his class(icist)ic cut, Krajewski is capable of taking decisions that – so his wife asserts – are “fantastical delusions”, for example, to drop his respectable occupation as a university lecturer and recklessly devote himself to an occupation just as marginal, with the known result.

Eo ipso

He began to dedicate his time to this practice seriously with the onset of 1991, when on a hot July afternoon, in the Ossolineum library, where, to put it in general terms, he was working, but in specific terms, he happened to be feeling bored, he had a revelation and hit upon the idea that he could become a writer. Once taken, the decision had to wait a few years to be implemented, until 1997, when during the great flood that hit Wrocław, he took his children and left the city, and instead of writing his doctoral thesis – to complete which he required some essential materials that he had forgotten to bring – he wrote a book. At this point Marek Krajewski entered upon the path of crime – ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt (“Fate leads the willing soul, but drags along the unwilling one” - Seneca) – leading from Death in Breslau to The Erinyes in Lwów. Along the way there were two side-steps down Suicide Avenue via the Cemetery Roses, with the cooperation of another individual of the male gender, but those are two completely different stories.

He became the author of the pentalogy with Breslau in the title. He possesses an alter ego.

Quotes about Marek Krajewski and Death in Breslau abroad:

“Krajewski has Mankell’s sharp eye for detail, but he has, too, a more sophisticated frame of reference that may intrigue fans of Umberto Eco and Boris Akunin...[an] erudite novel... The atmosphere of the novel is claustrophobic...Death in Breslau is a stylish, intelligent and original addition to the genre.” Financial Times

“The city of Breslau (today's Wroclaw) is as much a character in this thriller as the parade of gothic loons that inhabit it.” Daily Telegraph

“Part of the black magic in this book is the reimagination of what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw as it was for 700 years, the German city of Breslau.” The Times

“Krajewski's vision of Breslau in 1933 ... is reminiscent of Georg Grosz ... Death in Breslau isn't just an exciting mystery, it's the story of a lost Fatherland... Wonderful.” The Guardian