Wojciech Zukrowski: Stone Tablets

In 1966 Zukrowski published Stone Tablets , one of the first Polish language literary works to offer trenchant criticisms of Stalinism. The book had been finished a year and a half earlier, but the censors held up publication until Wladyslaw Gomulka, then head of the Polish state, personally ordered its release. Shortly thereafter, a new print run was delayed due to political pressure from Hungary, whose leaders resented the novel’s sympathetic depiction of the revolt of 1956. Renowned film director Andrzej Wajda was refused permission to make a motion picture of the book. A Czech translation was printed but banned from distribution by the government; when the ban was lifted, nothing remained to sell because workers in the warehouse where the copies were stored had smuggled all of them out to readers.

Stone Tablets remained a favorite with the Polish reading public and eventually, like several other Zukrowski novels, became a film. Its popularity continued after 1989, when the seventy-three-year-old author once again found himself in a free Poland. In 1996, Zukrowski won the Reymont Prize for lifetime literary achievement.

Zukrowski died in 2000. He had written forty-four books and won twenty literary awards, including the prestigious Pietrzak Prize for Stone Tablets . He was buried with military honors in Powazki Cemetery, the resting place of many notable Poles. The Pope organized a special mass for him in Rome.