Man in Shadow

A blend of crime fiction and psychodrama, this is the first English-language edition of Eustachy Rylski's award-winning novel

"He was at odds with himself, though less as years went by, because things happened without his participation―because life ran along beside him and he stood on the bank, not so much helplessly as idly watching its current."

Aleksander Rański, an attorney in his mid-thirties, lives with his mother in Warsaw, where his boredom with his job and his personal life eats away at him. He expected more civic improvement after the fall of Communism two years earlier, and his disillusionment, along with his love-hate relationship to his Russian heritage, leads him to accept a position with a Russian-connected mob boss who runs a trucking company in the city. Before long, driven by his inner emptiness, Rański beings to exploit his boss's paranoia and fabricate a drama with himself as the star―a drama that explodes out of his control in this fast-paced, atmospheric thriller.