A Grain of Truth

The novella “Suburban Evenings” takes place in the ancient Polish town of Sandomierz, a pearl of architecture untouched even by war, where beneath the ruins of an old fortress, an emaciated corpse is discovered and, nearby, a knife used for kosher slaughter of livestock. How do the legends of the past and the complicated history of postwar Polish-Jewish relations relate to this murder? Is there any truth in these legends? These are the questions the novel’s protagonist, prosecutor Teodor Szatzky, will have to unravel.