Almost everything about The King of Warsaw is gripping: the range of characters, the rich descriptions, and the plot twists, including one big stunner ... However, this book is not for readers with weak stomachs. It goes into vivid detail about myriad kinds of punching, shooting, stabbing, dismemberment, prisoner abuse, and rough sex ... should be required reading for the right-wing Poles today who still insist that their countrymen were never fascists or anti-Semites and that everything was the Germans’ fault.
... arresting ... The book’s ingenuity stems from the way it uses point of view. We float like a butterfly around our central story ... There’s a cool indifference to the tone, yet a hot, rapid pace propels the narrative. You’d be tripping over your feet trying to keep up with these criminals ... But arguably what’s most impressive about The King of Warsaw is the architecture of the words on the page ... Twardoch is a deft writer. On this insecure foundation he lays a whole world. The reader goes along, despite all warning. Then Twardoch, somehow, collapses everything, leaving us to come to in a different story altogether, as though we’ve been struck a blow. To be too specific about this would be likely to ruin the effect, but see for yourself. It’s an impressive sleight of hand ... There are metaphors to be scratched at, layers to be uncovered. Even as it stares into the abyss, it seems to me that this text is getting at something beyond bleak nothingness ... Either way – whatever way you want to read it – read it. The King of Warsaw is a fine and accomplished work that ought to be read widely and thoughtfully.
... dense but powerful ... Twardoch spins the convention of the unreliable narrator in multiple directions: not only may the narrator be deceiving the reader, he may also be deceiving himself. All of this storytelling legerdemain adds complexity and fascinating psychological texture to the book, which at its heart is a gripping tale of a Godfather-like power struggle between warring mobs, one largely Jewish, the other anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist.The Tarrantino-caliber violence can be overwhelming but is never gratuitous in a novel that is fundamentally about a country and its people on the verge of decimation.
Just as readers become accustomed to the adventures of Szapiro as written by Mojzesz, a twist occurs that shows that not everything is as it has been depicted ... This intelligent and literary novel about the Jewish situation in Poland is presented from an original vantage point. It will be of interest to readers of pre-Holocaust literature and books about the Jewish situation in Europe between World Wars.
Streaked with magic realism and dream logic, the novel slides eerily between reality and illusion, 1930s Poland and 1980s Israel, where Moyshe has morphed into a retired Israeli army officer typing out his Warsaw memories. Driven by a ruthless energy, the first of Twardoch's novels to be available in an English translation is astonishing and heartbreaking in equal measure. It never runs out of revelation ... A wickedly enthralling novel by one of Poland's emerging literary stars.
... brutal, messy, and compulsively readable ... While the novel’s pulpy atmosphere and phantasmagoric set pieces are excessive, the conclusion offers surprising insight into the narrator’s failure to come to terms with the past. Twardoch’s willingness to stare into the abyss elevates this racing work to sublime heights.
