My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual.

New York, NY W.W. Norton & Company, 1990. Paperback First Ed; First Printing indicated. First Ed; First Printing indicated. Near Fine in Wraps: shows only the most minute indications of use; binding square and secure; text clean. Just a hint of wear to extremities; mildest rubbing. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder. NOT a Book-Club Edition. NOT an Ex-Library copy. 8vo. 407pp. Trade Paperback. Published years after Wat's death, this remarkable transcription of his taped memoirs sears the imagination. Like Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, Wat records the life of a political prisoner with agonizing precision, texturing his recall with comic and compassionate portraits of his fellow prisoners and their guards. But Wat's genius lies beyond memorable evocation of place or even portraiture. His work is subtitled an "odyssey," and its true force transpires through the political and spiritual implications of his journeys among 13 Polish and Russian prisons during the 1930s and 1940s. Wat begins as a Communist and Jew and ends as an anti-Communist and Christian who still affirms his Jewishness. Above all, he defends his inner life against monstrous efforts to reduce it to time and trivia.