Faithful River

It is a complex, dramatic, masterfully told story in which a passionate love affair is played out against a background of wartime privations, and the Polish struggle for independence is set against other profound conflicts of gender, sexuality, and class. Although its sense of time and place is conveyed with convincing authenticity, its narrative and thematic composition has a universal resonance.

set in a rambling manor house in central Poland during the doomed January Uprising of 1863 to 1864, when a volunteer Polish army futilely fought the Russian occupation of the eastern partition. A badly wounded soldier appears outside the house and is taken in and cared for by Salomea, the young ward of the absent owners, who has been left in the manor with an aged servant. As the two strive to conceal the insurgent's presence during increasingly brutal and invasive visits by the Russian forces, Salomea finds herself falling in love with her patient.

Salomea is strong, resourceful, shrewd, and passionate; her profound commitment to the cause of Polish liberation, and to her own part in this struggle, is matched by a restless questioning of the devastation the uprising has brought about. She is a woman both of action and of reflection and belongs with Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Effi Briest as one of the great literary creations of the age.