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Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy

Jedna z najsłynniejszych powieści polskich, w której wykreowany został jeden z najsłynniejszych bohaterów popkultury.

Nikodema Dyzmę spotykamy w obskurnej spelunie, gdzie próbuje zarobić na chleb, grając na mandolinie. Do Warszawy przybył z Kresów w poszukiwaniu pracy. Wcześniej był urzędnikiem na poczcie, ale w wyniku kryzysu stracił tę pracę, teraz też nie widzie mu się w szukaniu nowego zajęcia. W wyniku przypadkowego zdarzenia w jego ręce trafia zaproszenie na raut dyplomatyczny, który ma się odbyć w Hotelu Europejskim. Dyzma decyduje się tam pójść, mając nadzieję, że wmiesza się w tłum gości i dobrze naje.
Na przyjęciu stara się nikomu nie wadzić, jednak w pewnym momencie jakiś gość uderzeniem w łokieć wytrąca mu z ręki talerz z sałatką, Dyzma reaguje na to bardzo ostro, czym niespodziewanie zdobywa podziw oraz spore pieniądze, jako zadatek przyszłej pracy…

Powieściowy pierwowzór Kariery Nikodema Dyzmy zrodził się z potrzeby... zemsty. Tadeusz Dołęga Mostowicz, jako młody dziennikarz popełnił artykuł, w którym niezwykle krytycznie odniósł się do rządów Józefa Piłsudskiego. Poirytowany marszałek postanowił oduczyć bezczelnego pismaka nieeleganckiego stylu, nasyłając na niego swoich podwładnych. Skatowany autor wpadł wówczas na pomysł napisania powieści będącej satyrą na polityczny salon dwudziestolecia. Głównym bohaterem uczynił bezrobotnego urzędniczynę z prowincji, który w zawrotnym tempie osiąga sukces na szczytach władzy.

302 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1932

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About the author

Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz

50 books77 followers
Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz was a Polish journalist and author of over a dozen popular novels. The best known, which in Poland became a byword for fortuitous careerism, was The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma. It is claimed by some that the book subsequently inspired the 1971 novel Being There by Jerzy Kosiński.

Tadeusz Mostowicz was born August 10, 1898, at his family's village of Okuniewo, near Vitebsk in the Russian Empire, the son of a wealthy lawyer. After graduating from gimnazjum (high school) in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), then Russian Empire in 1915 he embarked upon law studies at the University of Kiev. There he befriended numerous fellow members of the Polish diaspora and became involved in a local underground group of the Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Organization, abbreviated "POW" in Polish).

After the Russian Revolution, Okuniewo was seized by Bolshevik Russia, and Mostowicz's family moved to Poland, where they bought a small village. Also in 1918, Tadeusz moved to Warsaw, where he joined the Polish Army. He fought as a volunteer in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, and was demobilized in 1922.

While working at printing houses, Mostowicz sent short stories to newspapers and was finally discovered to be a talented reporter. From 1925 he was on the staff of the daily Rzeczpospolita (The Republic), one of the most influential newspapers in Poland. About that time he adopted the pen name "Dołęga", after his mother's Dołęga coat of arms. While a journalist, he began publishing short stories and pamphlets, many of which achieved considerable popularity.

In 1928 he quit his journalistic job and devoted himself full-time to writing fiction. The following year he finished his first novel, and in 1930 published it as Ostatnia brygada (The Last Brigade). However, it was not until 1932 that he became famous as the author of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy (The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma), the most popular of his books. Initially serialized in newspapers, the novel proved a major success. Thereafter Mostowicz wrote an average of 2 novels a year. His monthly income is estimated to have exceeded 15,000 złotych, some 2,800 1939 US dollars.

During Poland's defensive war in 1939, Dołęga-Mostowicz was mobilized and served as commanding officer of an outpost defending a bridge over the Cheremosh River at the town of Kuty in southeastern Poland. On September 22, 1939, he was killed in a skirmish with the advancing Soviet Red Army.

In 1978 his remains were exhumed and on November 24 interred at Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.

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