Killing the Second Dog

"Blowtorch of a novel. . matchless and prescient." —

"Spokesman for those who were angry and beat. . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured." —

"A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue. . a born rebel and troublemaker of immense charm." — Roman Polanski

In this novel of breathtaking tension and sweltering love, two desperate friends on the edge of the law — one of them tough and gutsy, the other small and scared — travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov's recently married younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov's business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn't help that a beautiful German widow named Ursula is rooming next door. What follows is a story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, all conveyed in hardboiled prose reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a cinematic style that would make Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando green with envy.

“History has no use for witnesses.

”

Long out of print, is Hłasko’s portrait of a system built on such denial and willful blindness. Factory worker Franciszek Kowalski is on his way home one evening after drinking with an old friend from the People’s Army when he unthinkingly yells some insults at a policeman. His outburst is taken as criticism of the government, and he is arrested and then expelled from the Party.

Kowalski attempts to rehabilitate himself by gathering testimonies from the men he had fought alongside, but each meeting with his former comrades takes him further into the underworld that he realizes has been there all along.

Written midway through Hłasko’s meteoric career, set its author and the Polish Communist government implacably against each other, and it’s easy to see why: Hłasko pulls no punches in portraying a regime that is maintained by constant surveillance, intimidation, and profound psychological manipulation.

A classic novel of political disillusionment from one of Poland’s seminal writers, an original “Angry Young Man” who lived fast, died young, and wrote brilliantly.