Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay

In the first English translation of Still Alive, the renowned Polish essayist and theater critic Jan Kott recounts his perilous odyssey through the endless political crises of Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth-century, illuminating not only the fate of a whole generation of intellectuals, but also his main concern: how to make sense of one's own existence "As a portrayal of turbulent times, the book is priceless, in particular because of its extraordinarily vivid depictions of the atmosphere of everyday life under Communism."-Stanislaw Baranczak, Harvard University "An incisive and vivid testimony of a gifted and zestful survival, Still Alive offers a suspenseful story of its author's harrowingly narrow escapes in Nazi-occupied Poland, and an illuminating account of his vicissitudes under the postwar Communist regime. That this widely acclaimed memoir is now available in English is good news indeed."-Victor Erlich, professor emeritus of Russian literature, Yale University "Written by a man with literary taste and a sense of the dramatic who knows how to tell a story without ever losing a sense of humor, taste for life, and a kind of gaiety."-Nicole Zand, Le Monde "The entire writing resonates with life and its mysteries, some resolved, some not. . . . The rigors and victories of Kott's life somehow offer sustenance to all who question existence."-Library Journal "A splendid evocation by an eminent theater critic and philosopher of what it meant to be alive-sometimes barely-during the tremendous upheavals in Europe caused by the Second World War and the installation of the Communist regime in Poland. . . . Kott shows an unerring sense of the telling detail that imprints a scene in the memory. A riveting book."-Kirkus Reviews