Future to Let

by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Jerzy Pietrkiewicz or Peterkiewicz was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, literary critic. He spent much of his life in British exile. He was a postgraduate student at St. Andrews University and professor of Polish language and literature at London University from 1972 to 1979.

He began writing novels in English in 1953, reserving Polish for his poetical works. His novels were successful, and led to friendships with Muriel Spark and John Purser. On the accession of Pope John Paul II, Pietrkiewicz translated his poems into English, and as a result his own work became known in Poland. He was awarded the Prize of the Ministry of Culture and Art in 1987.

His first book of poetry appeared in 1935, when he was 18, dedicated to the people of his village. Critical and popular success followed and he started to depict Poland as strong and free.

When, in 1939, the Germans and then the Russians invaded Poland, his career as a journalist and literary editor ended. He managed to reach Romania.

He arrived in Britain, from France, in 1940. Exempted from military service on health grounds, he was helped by the British Council to go to the University of St Andrews. There, he took a first degree in English and German in 1944, and then, in 1947, a doctorate in English literature from King's College London, becoming the first Pole in the history of that college to do so. Soon afterwards he married the writer Christine Brooke-Rose, but they later separated. He was also married briefly to a Polish actor called Danuta Karel.

He died in London.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ultra-buried Polish novelist and poet, Pietrkiewicz wrote eight novels between 1953-1969, all unavailable now and presumably unnoticed at the time. This one concerns Lancelot Thawroe, an Englishman who returns from Spain to inherit a house left to him by his uncle. He meets his basement lodger Celine, a Polish woman of striking appearance with a line in queasily incompetent English and poetic insights into the human heart, and later a doctor who embroils him in a plot of Polish political intrigue. Meanwhile Atrament, a Polish émigré seeking to find his freedom by hiding his savings in the bank accounts of disreputable women, has his scheme interrupted by the arrival of a former leader of a peasant revolt. Part romantic narrative, part political thriller, Pietrkiewicz has a mannered and quietly poetic style, crossing at times into the sickly with the romantic talk, but can drive a story forward entertainingly. The plot is frenetic and the love story not wholly convincing but his marvellously elegant sentences more than compensate for the holes in his socks.