In Love with Jerzy Kosinski: A Novel - Hardcover

Nesaule, Agate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299231305 ISBN 13: 9780299231309

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009

Synopsis

From Agate Nesaule, acclaimed by writers across the globe from Doris Lessing to Tim O’Brien, comes a long-awaited novel. In Love with Jerzy Kosinski is a story of courage and persistence, exploring in fiction the themes that gripped readers of Nesaule’s award-winning memoir, A Woman in Amber.
    After fleeing Latvia as a child, Anna Duja escapes Russian confinement in displaced persons camps and eventually arrives in America. Years later, she finds herself in a different kind of captivity on isolated Cloudy Lake, Wisconsin, living with her disarming but manipulative husband, Stanley.
    Inspired by the transformation of Polish-Jewish émigré Jerzy Kosinski from persecuted wartime escapee to celebrity author in America, Anna slips away from Stanley and Cloudy Lake in small steps: learning to drive, making friends, moving to Madison, falling in love, and learning to forgive. Readers will applaud the book’s power, the beauty of its prose, and its strong evocation of a woman gradually finding her way in the wake of trauma. 
Winner, the Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

About this title

About the Author

Agate Nesaule is author of A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile, which won an American Book Award. She was born in Latvia and grew up in the turmoil of World War II. A professor emerita of English and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, she lives, writes, and gardens in Madison.

From Booklist

Having endured the horrors of World War II as a Latvian refugee in a Russian displaced-persons camp, Anna Duja finds herself victimized all over again during her marriage to the abusive Stanley, an insidious bully who keeps Anna a virtual prisoner in their remote country cabin. Although Anna was once a respected university professor who longs to return to academe, Stanley’s disparaging attitude convinces her that she’s incapable and unworthy. Through the practical support of strong female friends and with the brilliant-but-troubled Polish author Jerzy Kosinski as her emotional touchstone, Anna gathers the strength to leave Stanley, only to discover that living independently presents a wealth of new problems. Not only is she reduced to working a menial retail job, she also falls in love with a younger man who, in his own perverse way, is every bit as tormenting as her ex-husband. Haunted and vulnerable yet astute and resilient, Nesaule’s tragically flawed heroine navigates an unnerving yet ultimately uplifting journey of self-discovery. --Carol Haggas

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0299231305
• ISBN 13: 9780299231309
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 211