Warsaw Tales

by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator), Helen Constantine (editor)

Warsaw Tales is an anthology of short stories and non-fiction set in the Polish capital. Beginning in 1911 with Boleslaw Prus' Apparitions, the collected stories provide a chronological account of the city's tumultuous and dramatic history. Each story captures a phase of Warsaw's past, through the interwar period as a Polish republic, the Second World War and the city's Nazi occupation, the post-war city in ruins and its rebuilding under the communist regime, and its new status as the capital of an independent Poland in 1989. With each story set in a specific part of the city, the collection becomes a guidebook to Warsaw's temporal, spatial, and psychological geography.

This collection features a wide variety of authors including Boleslaw Prus, Maria Kuncewiczowa, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Ludwik Hering, Zofia Petersowa, Marek Hlasko, Kazimierz Orlos, Hanna Krall, Antoni Libera, Zbigniew Mentzel, Olga Tokarczuk, and Krzysztof Varga.

Genres: Short Stories, Anthologies

252 pages, Paperback

Published December 12, 2024

About the author

Antonia Lloyd-Jones is the 2018 winner of the Transatlantyk Award for the most outstanding promoter of Polish literature abroad. She has translated works by several of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists and writers of reportage, as well as crime fiction, poetry, and children’s books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted foe the 2019 International Booker Prize.

She is a mentor for the Emerging Translator Mentorship Programme and former co-chair of the Translators Association of the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Herb Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

WARSAW TALES, selected and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a phenomenal introduction both to that marvelous city and to the Polish writers who memorialize, lovingly criticize, and grudgingly adore it.

Although one of the stories here is by Nobel prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk, other selections outshine it. “The View from Above and Below” by Antoni Libera was, for me, the true gem of the collection, but each story is engaging and will have you referencing a map, searching for lost and still-extant places, mentally planning a trip to see the city for the first time or to discover it anew.

Special mention must be made for Lloyd-Jones whose careful curation of these works succeeds spectacularly in her goal, stated in her excellent introduction, of conveying the ever-present links between the oft-tragic past and the qualified optimism of today’s Polish moment in Europe. The end notes about writers and suggested further reading are excellent and will have the reader seeking out additional Polish works to explore – perhaps from a cozy cafe on Krakowskie Przedmieście while spying today’s Varsovians enjoying their lovely capital.

[Devyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book from Goodreads.

Warsaw Tales is a not particularly pleasant to read anthology of short stories and non-fiction set in the Polish capital Warsaw.

This book is meant to convey a taste of Warsaw and its complex, tumultuous history to a reader that has never experienced the city, and it goes about it in such a way as to seemingly run the potential visitor off with twelve depressing tales of fact and fiction that's difficult to differentiate between.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly wonderfully exquisite collection of short stories. Each either set in a specific, distinctive place in Warsaw, or where the city itself plays a role like a character etched into people's lives. The selection of stories & authors here helps to bring to life the city's variety & depth of creativity.

One of the book's greatest achievements is reinforcing Warsaw's status as a literary city, a vibrant city both as a place of creation & a sense of setting. A city which never stands still, yet retains its identity.

I wonder whether reading books in this series feels as evocative as this one does for me when the city & its history are less familiar as may be the case for some with Warsaw.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 12 stories included in this collection all tell tales of the last century of Warsaw, covering the conflicts, culture, and destruction of the city, and, broadly, Warsaw as an emerging city in the 21st century. As a reader, I keenly felt the heartbreak, hope, sadness, and expectation of a new tomorrow inherent in so many of the pieces. Not only that, I learned a lot; reading this book felt like an educational walk through Warsaw’s complex history, particularly as the mostly chronological arrangement of the stories meant that readers are essentially pulled through time toward the present day. Glad to have won a finished paperback copy of this collection in a Goodreads giveaway.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 - Got this on a whim at the train station when I was leaving Warsaw. Time and place made this a particularly compelling read

[Ian Doreian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poland exchange 2025
Opening day in Warsaw (across from Presidential palace) and closing day down by Uprising Museum.

This collection provides snapshots of a city making life from ghosts.

While not a common Polish genre, thankful for these short stories to narrate walking through Warsaw