Published in Poland after World War II, this collection of concentration camp stories shows atrocious crimes becoming an unremarkable part of a daily routine. Prisoners eat, work, sleep, and fall in love a few yards from where other prisoners are systematically slaughtered. The will to survive overrides compassion, and the line between the normal and the abnormal wavers, then vanishes. Borowski, a concentration camp victim himself, understood what human beings will do to endure the unendurable. Together, these stories constitute not only a masterpiece of Polish - and world - literature but stand as cruel testimony to the level of inhumanity of which man is capable.

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-90) was renowned for his revolutionary theater performances in both his native Poland and abroad. Despite nominally being a Catholic, Kantor had a unique relationship with Jewish culture and incorporated many elements of Jewish theater into his works. In Kaddish, Jan Kott, an equally important figure in twentieth-century theater criticism, presents one of the most poignant descriptions of what might be called "the experience of Kantor." At the core of the book is a fundamental philosophical question: What can save the memory of Kantor's "Theatre of Death"-the Image, or the Word/Logos? Kott's biblical answer in Kaddish is that Kantor's theatre can be saved in its essence only by the Word, the Logos. This slim volume, Kott's final work, is a distilled meditation that casts light on how two of the most prominent figures in Western theater reflected on the philosophy of the stage.

In the first English translation of Still Alive, the renowned Polish essayist and theater critic Jan Kott recounts his perilous odyssey through the endless political crises of Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth-century, illuminating not only the fate of a whole generation of intellectuals, but also his main concern: how to make sense of one's own existence As a portrayal of turbulent times, the book is priceless, in particular because of its extraordinarily vivid depictions of the atmosphere of everyday life under Communism.-Stanislaw Baranczak, Harvard University An incisive and vivid testimony of a gifted and zestful survival, Still Alive offers a suspenseful story of its author's harrowingly narrow escapes in Nazi-occupied Poland, and an illuminating account of his vicissitudes under the postwar Communist regime. That this widely acclaimed memoir is now available in English is good news indeed.-Victor Erlich, professor emeritus of Russian literature, Yale University Written by a man with literary taste and a sense of the dramatic who knows how to tell a story without ever losing a sense of humor, taste for life, and a kind of gaiety.-Nicole Zand, Le Monde The entire writing resonates with life and its mysteries, some resolved, some not...The rigors and victories of Kott's life somehow offer sustenance to all who question existence.-Library Journal A splendid evocation by an eminent theater critic and philosopher of what it meant to be alive-sometimes barely-during the tremendous upheavals in Europe caused by the Second World War and the installation of the Communist regime in Poland...Kott shows an unerring sense of the telling detail that imprints a scene in the memory. A riveting book.-Kirkus Reviews

In "The Eating of the Gods "the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed "Shakespeare Our Contemporary, "Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the "Bacchae "of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.

The sixteen essays collected in "The Theater of Essence" define the point of view of one of the most influential theater critics of our time. Jan Kott's subjects extend from Tadeusz Borowski, Ibsen, Ionesco, and Gogol to Bunraku theater in Japan, Yiddish theater in New York, and Grotowski's theater in Poland.