I’D LIKE TO SAY SORRY, BUT THERE’S NO ONE TO SAY SORRY TO

A series of monologues describing Jewish life in contemporary—and not-so-contemporary—Poland.

Grynberg, a photographer and psychologist as well as a writer, is known in his native Poland for his oral histories: collections of interviews with Polish Jews about their experiences. His first work of fiction—and his first work to appear in English—makes use of those interviews as a jumping-off point. The book takes the form of a collection of fictionalized monologues, each no longer than three or four pages. In several of them, the speakers are surprised to learn that they themselves are Jewish when older relatives reveal the truth that, for years, they’d been hiding. In one, a boy only learns he’s Jewish after his grandmother sends him off to a Jewish summer camp. In another, three little girls pretend they’re hiding through the war in a cellar, where their antisemitic father is surprised to find them. In a note at the end of the book, Grynberg’s translator, Bye, describes the book as “not so much polyphonic as clamorous.” It’s an apt description; the collection, in which dozens of voices clamor to be heard, is a moving and often wryly funny portrait of Polish Jewishness. Grynberg has zeroed in on a particular generation—one that is once or twice removed from the Holocaust, the children or grandchildren of survivors. Taken as a whole, the collection traces the commonalities as well as the differences among all these experiences. And while the result can be grim, Grynberg’s deft, light touch also provides a sense of levity, hope, and even laughter.

At times witty, at others devastating, Grynberg’s first foray into fiction is a major triumph.