A richly evocative and moving portrait of an ordinary Polish Jewish family in the years preceding the Second World War.

Though he returned from America penniless, Nathan Stramer still daydreams of a better life. Raising six children with his wife Rywka in a poor area of Tarnów, he chases hare-brained schemes to make money while she fantasises about a trip to the seaside.

Meanwhile, their children are taking steps out into a changing world. Rudek, the eldest, sets his passions aside for a practical job; Rena falls in love with a married man, and Hesio and Salek get ever more involved with Communism.

While Nathan and Rywka try to hold the centre of their raucous family life, national conflicts begin to escalate, and something sinister creeps into the Stramers' world that they don't yet understand.

Details

ISBN13: 9781805332138
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 416
Edition:
Publication Date: 06 Jan 2026
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Mikołaj Łoziński is a Polish novelist, screenwriter and photographer. He has received several awards for his writing, including the Polityka Passport and the Kościelski Foundation Award. My Name is Stramer, his third novel, was shortlisted for the prestigious Nike Literary Award and has been translated into 16 languages. Łoziński lives in Warsaw.

Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists, including Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk and Artur Domosławski. In 2018 she was honored with Poland's Transatlantyk Award for the most outstanding promoter of Polish literature abroad.

Reviews

'A great, compelling, and beautiful tale of a family, of the bonds that tie brothers and sisters, of support in every circumstance, no matter how complex... The Stramer family and their town of Tarnów are painted so vividly that it seems Mikołaj Łoziński has been given the divine talent of time travel' - Vogue

'Outstanding... This is the kind of book people wait to find: wise and brilliantly written... Łoziński has not written a novel about the Holocaust, but about the life that came before it' - Newsweek

'Mikołaj Łoziński shows that ordinary people's lives can be as fascinating as a sensational story. A brilliantly written novel!' - Olga Tokarczuk, author of Flights