Testaments ─ Two Novellas Of Emigration And Exile

For more than two hundred years, Polish emigres have written poignantly about the pain of exile in letters, diaries, and essays; others, more recently, have recreated Polish-American communities in works of fiction. But it is Danuta Mostwin's fiction, until now unavailable in English translation, that bridges the divide between Poland and America, between exile and emigration.
Danuta Mostwin here presents two novellas translated by the late Marta Erdman and Nina Dyke, the first of her literary works to be published in English in the United States.
Deeply melancholy and moving in their unsentimental depiction of ordinary people trying to make sense of their uprooted lives, The Last Will of Blaise Twardowski and Jocasta are powerful vignettes of life in immigrant America. This timely publication, which includes an introduction by noted scholar Joanna Rostropowicz Clark and an afterword by Thomas J. Napierkowski, provides a first look into Mostwin's work, one that will ensure that she is recognized as the creator of the most nuanced depiction of emigration and exile in Polish-American literature.