Marek Hłasko – working-class hero

Abstract

In his early twenties Marek Hłasko (1934–69), an ‘angry young man’ and a rare ‘authentic’ working-class voice, became the great literary hope of the Polish Communist Party. In the space of a few months, and at a crucial moment in post-war Polish history, he made his literary debut, published two books, received the Polish State Literary Prize and instantly became a popular youth-hero and celebrity rebel. But just as rapidly he became an exile, an outcast and a pariah. In the West he found ‘freedom’ as difficult to negotiate as life under communism, and while he continued to write, after 11 nomadic years he died of an overdose. His life and his writing are of one piece: his career trajectory illustrates how the Party could operate to promote writers it favoured, but to block and isolate those who opposed it.