Not unlike the proverbial Hydra, the scourges of the 20th century are still with us today. War, racism, totalitarianism, extremisms of many hues, anti-Semitism, they are all there - seemingly invincible. A political thriller and a historical novel at the same time, RED ROVER deals with some of them. Set in Poland in the 1970s, it aims at keeping certain important memories alive. Even though incorporeal, a significant presence in the novel is the American poet John Berryman and his work, especially his unfinished sequence of poems THE BLACK BOOK, dealing with Nazi atrocities in Poland during the Second World War, notably The Holocaust. ANDRZEJ SLOMIANOWSKI was born in 1943 in Lublin, Poland, and was educated at the Film and Theater Academy in Lodz. Poet, novelist and translator, he is the author of two novels, three collections of poems and numerous translations from English, German and Norwegian into Polish. Since1983 he lives in Germany and works as a freelance writer.
