An Imperfect Time

Author: Bronislaw Wildstein.

An Imperfect Time is an epic story depicting the fate of people involved in the grim history of the twentieth century in Poland. From the pogrom in the village near Pinsk to the reality of the Third Republic, the author takes us on a narrative that changes perspective, epochs and countries. We follow the fate of several generations of the Brok family, to whom history did not spare anything, neither suffering nor betrayal, nor crime, nor ideological constriction. This story attempts to understand the experiences that shaped today’s Poland, from the bloody October Revolution through optimistic Solidarity to the Third Polish Republic. This is a tale of choices people have to make when faced with the    absurdities and numbing feeling of a society under guard. It is a kind of morality play showing the struggle of people against the temptations of evil and nothingness, those temptations that were effectively misled by the twentieth century.

Bronislaw Wildstein (born in 1952), writer, journalist, currently a columnist for Rzeczpospolita and the weekly Uwazam Rze. He graduated in Polish at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In the 1970’s he was an anti-communist opposition activist. He was the co-founder of the Student Solidarity Committee in Krakow (1977). In 1980 he participated in the founding of Solidarity and the NZS in Krakow. He was the Co-founder and in 1982-87 editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine, Contact, published in Paris and published in the emigration and underground press. At the beginning of 1990 he returned to Poland, where he performed the functions of, among others, director of Radio Krakow; edited Zycie Warszawy; deputy editor-in-chief Life; president of TVP; journalist of Rzeczpospolita and weekly Wprost and many other periodicals. He has worked in broadcast radio and television. He was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.