Miko­laj Grynberg’s sec­ond work of fic­tion, Con­fi­den­tial: A Nov­el, is a strong par­al­lel to his first, the acclaimed col­lec­tion of short sto­ries I’d Like to Say Sor­ry, but There’s No One to Say Sor­ry To. Both cen­ter the expe­ri­ences of Jews in mod­ern-day Poland, and both have sharp, spare prose. 

But where­as I’d Like to Say Sor­ry cov­ers the expe­ri­ences of dozens of char­ac­ters in the form of brief short sto­ries, Con­fi­den­tial fol­lows a sin­gle fam­i­ly. Rep­re­sent­ing three gen­er­a­tions, this unnamed fam­i­ly is attempt­ing to find a place for them­selves in a his­tor­i­cal­ly — and, at times, present­ly — hos­tile home­land, while also try­ing to nav­i­gate the after­ef­fects of the Holo­caust: how it shaped their atti­tudes toward their coun­try­men and their Jew­ish­ness; how it alien­at­ed them from them­selves and their fam­i­lies; and how it instilled in them cer­tain emo­tion­al respons­es — such as an inabil­i­ty to express sad­ness, or a sharp inter­nal alarm that goes off when­ev­er some­one is a minute late — that don’t serve them.

Secre­cy about one’s Jew­ish­ness is a cen­tral theme in I’d Like to Say Sor­ry, as it is in Con­fi­den­tial. None of the char­ac­ters are giv­en names — they’re described only in rela­tion to one anoth­er (i.e., broth­er, moth­er, father, etc.), as if, were their names to be revealed, there’d be con­se­quences — a clear homage to Jews hid­ing their Jew­ish iden­ti­ty to pro­tect them­selves dur­ing the Holo­caust. Yet, giv­en that the sto­ry is set in the mod­ern age, that same fear, that inten­si­ty is no longer present. The nar­ra­tor notes that oth­er Jew­ish Poles are adopt­ing the names that they had before the war, and final­ly, after long search­ing for it, the moth­er of the fam­i­ly also takes back the name of her bio­log­i­cal father, a Jew­ish man who was killed in the war. It’s an indi­ca­tion that Poland’s Jews are recov­er­ing, com­ing back to the sur­face — and yet, the anonymi­ty remains, as if the char­ac­ters are telling the read­er, We’re safer, but not safe.

The novel’s with­hold­ing of key infor­ma­tion — such as names, times, and places — can some­times make for a bit of a labo­ri­ous read­ing expe­ri­ence. Before they’re giv­en their rela­tion­ship titles (again: broth­er, moth­er, etc.), char­ac­ters are often intro­duced sim­ply as ​“he” or ​“she.” Giv­en how short the nov­el is, and giv­en its pref­er­ence for spo­radic vignettes over a tra­di­tion­al chrono­log­i­cal time­line, some read­ers may expe­ri­ence con­fu­sion as the sto­ry moves along. Con­verse­ly, though, this also speaks to the novel’s cen­tral themes: being lost, out of time and out of place, always search­ing for direction. 

Grynberg’s dark humor adds some lev­i­ty to these oth­er­wise painful scenes. Words are mis­re­mem­bered or mis­pro­nounced — in one instance, ​“metas­ta­sized” is instead ​“meta-sized” — and lessons giv­en often end up back­fir­ing on the giv­er. This makes the sto­ry seem play­ful at times, as if what’s hap­pen­ing real­ly isn’t all that seri­ous. It’s a del­i­cate bal­ance to strike — offer­ing light­ness in such a heavy sto­ry — but it’s demon­strat­ed effec­tive­ly here.

The New Press and Sean Gasper Bye, the novel’s trans­la­tor, have done a ser­vice in pre­sent­ing this book to an Eng­lish-read­ing mar­ket. One can only hope that, as Gryn­berg con­tin­ues to write, we’ll be able to keep read­ing his work.