My First Suicide

Part novel, part collection: the same places and people return, and the hero is a boy from Wisła brought up in a strict Protestant home, later a provincial who moves to Kraków. In the title story the narrator recalls, forty years on, planning to take his own life at night without waking his parents, practising for ages how to draw the curtains silently; practice, he notes, is the way of life. Behind the jokes stands a lonely writer past fifty with a drinking problem and erotic complexes, a disastrous toast at his parents' anniversary and a chess table his father once ordered.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Short stories

Length

298 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

Poland

First published

2006 by Świat Książki

Author's age

54 when first published

ISBN

9788324704736 (original)

9781934824405 (Open Letter, United States)