Mapped
The Doll
Bolesław Prus
Prus's panorama of Warsaw at the end of the 1870s follows the self-made merchant Stanisław Wokulski, torn between a rational, ambitious life and a consuming, hopeless love for the cold aristocrat Izabela Łęcka. The city is mapped in detail: Wokulski's shop on the grand boulevard of Krakowskie Przedmieście, the royal park of Łazienki where he watches Izabela, the salons of the Aleje Ujazdowskie, and the riverside poverty of Powiśle from which he rose.
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The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
Grass's Danzig, the city he was born in and lost, is the whole stage of the novel: the Kashubian potato country to the west, the Langfuhr suburb where Oskar grows up beating his drum, the Old Town and its theatre, the Polish Post Office he helps defend as the war begins, and the harbour out at Neufahrwasser. The map runs from the fields inland to the Baltic mouth of the Dead Vistula, over what is now Poland.
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