Annihilation

Like Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, Annihilation is about a day in the life of a town - in this case, a Polish-Jewish town shortly before World War II. The reader participates in the life of the town instant by instant - from the moment when the local courtesan pours the contents of her chamber pot out her open window up to the moment when the city policemen return to night duty. For the narrator, every object, every person and event belongs to the world he strives to save from impending annihilation: the landscape of beer drops left on a counter, the dance of the Hasidim before the Town Hall, the taste of mint drops in an attorney's mouth. As the minutes on the Town Hall's clock measure the day's passing, and as this day's passing brings the town one day closer to its historical annihilation, a Book of the Day writes itself, preserving the town in memory against the ravages of time and history. Already a success in Poland and in translation in France, Germany, and Italy, Piotr Szewc's novel has been compared to the novels of Proust and to the paintings of Chagall.