Which fragments were those?
Well, I find it hard to talk about, but despite a large-scale search we haven’t been able to find the Young Man’s mysterious smile—all that’s left of his mouth is part of the upper lip. You remember Alice in Wonderland? There we had the smile without a cat. Here we have the cat without a smile.
The cat?
That’s what we call him in the workshop, because of the fur that’s thrown over his shoulder.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Tisha Minö
Zygmunt Miłoszewski is Poland’s #1 bestselling novelist as well as a screenwriter. His trilogy of crime novels featuring prosecutor Teodor Szacki—Entanglement, A Grain of Truth, and Rage—has received international recognition, making him one of the world’s best-known contemporary Polish writers.
Miłoszewski has won the Polityka Passport for Polish literature. He is also a two-time winner of the High Calibre Award for the best Polish crime novel, and he has earned two nominations for the French Prix du Polar Européen for the best European crime novel.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Antonia Lloyd-Jones is a prize-winning translator of Polish literature. She has translated works by many of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists and authors of reportage, as well as crime fiction, poetry, screenplays, essays, and children’s books. She is a mentor for the WCN Emerging Translator Mentorship Programme, and from 2015–17 was cochair of the UK Translators Association.
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