Jasieński, Bruno
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of Polish author and polemicist Wiktor Zysman (1901-1938), a founder of Polish Futurism. Little of his work is of sf interest – even when a liberal interpretation is laid upon the cognate relationship between certain kinds of post-World War One Modernism and Fantastika – except for one novel, "Je Brûle Paris" (1928 L'Humanité; trans Soren A Gauger and Marcin Piekoszewski as I Burn Paris 2012), in which a down-and-out worker steals a plague bacillus, with which he contaminates the water supply of Paris. The action moves into the Near Future as the doomed inhabitants of Paris separate themselves, according to ethnic origin and politic bias, into walled Keeps; but what has become a full-blown Pandemic takes all of them, except for 30,000 members of the proletariat, who have been isolated in vast prisons, who now establish a dictatorship of the people in the ruins. Phosphorescent augurs of a great War to come nearly poison the world, but the new Parisians capture Europe just in time. The novel has more than once been compared to Karel Čapek's War With the Newts (1936). [JC]
Wiktor Zysman
born Klimontów, Congress Poland: 17 July 1901
died Butyrka Prison, Moscow: 17 August 1938
works
- Je Brûle Paris (Paris: le Félin-Kiron, 2003) [first appeared 1928 L'Humanité: journal appearance in French preceded all others: binding unknown/]
- Palę Paryż (Warsaw, Poland: Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój", 1929) [first publication in Polish: binding unknown/]
- I Burn Paris (Prague, Czech Republic: Twisted Spoon Press, 2012) [trans by Soren A Gauger and Marcin Piekoszewski of the above: hb/Dan Mayer]
- Palę Paryż (Warsaw, Poland: Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój", 1929) [first publication in Polish: binding unknown/]
links
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