About this book
Bruno Schulz's *Sklepy Cynamonowe* is a mesmerizing debut collection that transforms the mundane streets of a pre-war Galician town into a realm of myth and wonder. Originally composed as poetic prose passages woven into letters to friends, these interconnected short stories reimagine the author's native Drohobycz through a dreamlike, visionary lens that blurs reality and imagination.
At the heart of this lyrical fiction lies the story of a merchant family, their ordinary lives elevated into something mythic and profound. Schulz conjures a world where summer days shimmer with almost hallucinatory intensity, where mannequins possess uncanny agency, and where the simplest domestic scenes—a servant returning with fruit and meat, a father's absence—become charged with strange significance. His prose moves between the grotesque and the tender, the everyday and the symbolic, creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously intimate and unsettling.
*Sklepy Cynamonowe* reveals Schulz as a visionary writer who found the extraordinary hidden within ordinary experience. His elaborate, sensory-rich language captures the texture of pre-war Jewish intellectual life while exploring timeless themes of desire, memory, and human transformation. This is essential listening for anyone drawn to experimental fiction, European literature, or narratives that challenge the boundaries between reality and dream. Schulz's singular voice continues to enchant readers nearly a century after its first publication.
