The House with the Stained-Glass Window
By Żanna Słoniowska
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Published by Quercus/MacLehose Press
Publication date: 21 September 2017
ISBN 978-0857057136
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Thursday, 5 October, 7pm
British Library, London
Family Tales of War
With Dulce Maria Cardoso, Martin Fahner, Żanna Słoniowska, and Péter Gárdos, chaired by Anita Sethi
Friday, 6 October, 7.30pm
Ognisko Polskie, London
In 1989, Marianna, the beautiful star soprano at the Lviv opera, is shot dead in the street as she leads the Ukrainian citizens in their protest against Soviet power. Only eleven years old at the time, her daughter tells the story of their family before and after that critical moment - including, ten years later, her own passionate affair with an older, married man.
Just like their home city of Lviv, which stands at the crossroads of nations and cultures, the women in this family have had turbulent lives, scarred by war and political turmoil, but also by their own inability to show each other their feelings. Lyrically told, this is the story of a young girl's emotional, sexual, artistic and political awakening as she matures under the influence of her relatives, her mother's former lover, her city and its fortunes.
The House with the Stained-Glass Window is remarkable, a gripping, Lvivian evocation of a city and a family across a long and painful century, at once personal and political, a novel of life and survival across the ages.
– Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
Żanna Słoniowska was born in 1978 in Lviv and is a journalist and translator. She now lives in Kraków. She is the first winner of the Znak Publishers' Literary Prize, for which her novel was chosen from among over a thousand entries. In 2016, Żanna Słoniowska won the Conrad Award, the Polish award for first novels.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones translates from Polish, and has twice won the Found in Translation award. She has translated works by several of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, crime fiction, poetry, and children’s books. One of her most recent publications is 'My Lwów' by Józef Wittlin, in City of Lions (Pushkin Press). She is a mentor for the WCN Emerging Translators’ Mentorship Programme, and co-chair of the UK Translators Association.