BRUNO SCHULZ was a Polish-Jewish writer and artist. Born in 1892 in Drohobycz, Poland (now part of Ukraine), he worked for many years as an art teacher in his hometown. He published two collections of short fiction, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. In 1942 he was killed by a Gestapo officer and much of his work, including a novel titled The Messiah, was lost. The little that remains has influenced numerous important writers, including J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Salman Rushdie, David Grossman and Jonathan Safran Foer.

 

‘Schulz was incomparably gifted as an explorer of his own inner life’

J. M. COETZEE

 

‘A man of enormous artistic gifts and imaginative riches’

PHILIP ROTH

 

‘Bruno Schulz was one of the great writers, one of the great transmogrifiers of the world into words’

JOHN UPDIKE

 

‘I read Schulz’s stories and felt the gush of life’

DAVID GROSSMAN