Confidential (2025)
Confidential follows on the success of acclaimed photographer, psychologist, and writer Mikołaj Grynberg’s highly acclaimed short story collection, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To, which was a finalist for numerous awards, including Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award in Prose for Sean Gasper Bye’s translation.
This powerful new novella is a darkly comic portrait of a Jewish family in today’s Poland, struggling to express their love for one another in the face of a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. The grandfather is a doctor, a Holocaust survivor who has now vowed to live only for pleasure. His son, born at the start of the war, becomes a well-respected physicist, but finds himself emotionally unable to attend conferences in Germany, despite the benefit it would give his career. The mother is loving but firm, though she has a secret habit of attending strangers’ funerals so that she can cry.
A masterpiece of concision, Confidential expands on one of the stories in I’d Like to Say Sorry … , tackling themes of memory, trauma, and care, as well as enduring anti-Semitism, with unforgettable power, emotional complexity, and Grynberg’s trademark black humor.
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Zielony Balonik book club notes:
Krystyna Szumelukowa writes (her text is given first in English, then in Polish translation):
Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft praise this book highly but over my four hours of reading there were times when I was not so sure. I had to get used to the fact that none of the characters were given a name which I presume was deliberate to reinforce the insecurity of Jewish people to reveal their identities after the Second World War. But I do recall that we have read Maria Chamberlain’s book Never tell anyone you are Jewish.
The lack of names made it more difficult to follow some of the discontinuities in the novel in which Grynberg juxtaposes short family scenarios in different times and places and not in a linear format. Again I presume this was deliberate to highlight the perception of time being linear, or not. The first chapter sets out the way time can play tricks on us and how we can embrace our past to enhance our future. It is a strange introduction to a novel but it comes clearer as you make progress through the family story.
Much of life’s philosophical questions and family psychologies which frame the family scenarios I would not ascribe to being just Jewish. 6 million people in Poland died in the Second World War and displacement and loss has been endured across Europe. The consequences applied across all faiths and races. There are many very human scenes which Grynberg writes in a beautiful and succinct way but they are not necessarily just Jewish. The loss of ability to cry is well known amongst the oppressed. The sadness of being an orphan is universal.
The jokes show how humour is a saviour in many situations and will be well known in Jewish circles. Again the same applies across nations and cultures and for me the best is British humour. An intriguing novel and different and for this reason I liked this first novel by Grynberg.
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Olga Tokarczuk i Jennifer Croft bardzo chwalą tę książkę, ale podczas moich czterech godzin czytania zdarzały się momenty, kiedy nie byłam do końca przekonana. Musiałam się przyzwyczaić do faktu, że żadna z postaci nie otrzymała imienia, co, jak przypuszczam, było celowe, by wzmocnić poczucie niepewności Żydów przed ujawnieniem swojej tożsamości po drugiej wojnie światowej. Pamiętam jednak, że czytaliśmy książkę Marii Chamberlain Nigdy nie mów nikomu, że jesteś Żydówką.
Brak imion utrudniał śledzenie niektórych nieciągłości w powieści, w której Grynberg zestawia krótkie historie rodzinne w różnych czasach i miejscach, a nie w sposób linearny. Ponownie, przypuszczam, że było to celowe, aby podkreślić postrzeganie czasu jako liniowego lub nie. Pierwszy rozdział przedstawia, jak czas potrafi płatać nam figle i jak możemy zaakceptować naszą przeszłość, aby ulepszyć naszą przyszłość. To dziwne wprowadzenie do powieści, ale staje się coraz bardziej zrozumiałe w miarę zagłębiania się w historię rodziny.
Wielu filozoficznych pytań życiowych i psychologii rodziny, które kształtują scenariusze rodzinne, nie przypisałbym wyłącznie Żydom. 6 milionów ludzi w Polsce zginęło podczas II wojny światowej, a w całej Europie doszło do przesiedleń i strat. Konsekwencje te dotknęły wszystkie wyznania i rasy. Grynberg opisuje wiele bardzo ludzkich scen w piękny i zwięzły sposób, ale niekoniecznie są one wyłącznie żydowskie. Utrata zdolności do płaczu jest dobrze znana wśród uciskanych.
Żarty pokazują, jak humor bywa zbawienny w wielu sytuacjach i będzie dobrze znany w kręgach żydowskich. To samo dotyczy różnych narodów i kultur, a dla mnie najlepszy jest brytyjski humor. Intrygująca i różnorodna powieść, dlatego spodobała mi się ta debiutancka powieść Grynberga.
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Patrycja Jankowska writes:
Mikolaj Grynberg’s Confidential is about people who live in a world created by their thoughts.
They live in the process of losing their post-war memories. Jewish families who live in Poland, however, cannot say who they are.
It is not very easy to read because it requires understanding and deep thinking, as the author moves with retrospection, showing the everyday life of the family.
Despite trauma, inherited by memory, the main characters discuss who they are in places where they are not accepted and cannot reveal their identity. Their beliefs, culture, names and dates have been removed or hidden. The novel seems to change the plot, showing readers the conglomerate of short stories from the lives of various people.
Characters are connected by family bonds but also by an invisible code, understandable only to them.
For example, a meeting is scheduled for 3pm; however only they know the actual meeting time is fifteen minutes earlier. Nobody would follow or meet them because they were leaving the place immediately.
The book consists of monologues, which tell the story based on psychological portraits and keep readers in uncertainty, but with a sense of humour. Yiddish spoken by a black care-worker shows confusion because the language is spoken by a person from a different background, who does not fit what he says. However, this knowledge of Yiddish created trust based on irony between caregiver and service user. Jewish culture appears in unexpected places from an unexpected person.
It also shows that identity is not a matter of belonging to a social group or religion.
It is what’s inside.
Nevertheless, personal freedom does not guarantee social approval. The way of life causes consequences to which people react in their own ways.
“Everyone has the right to make decisions about their own lives, but there’s no rule that others will find them easy to take.”