“…all I could see was death…” #jozefczapski #nyrbclassics #20BOS26 Book 5

Jozef Czapski is an author whose books have made a couple of appearances on the blog previously. Back in 2019, I wrote about “Lost Time“, a collection of lectures he gave on Proust whilst incarcerated in a Soviet concentration camp; and in 2022 I shared my thoughts on his “Memories of Starobielsk“, covering his time in that camp. Both titles were issued by NYRB Classics, and they’ve also published two other titles by and about him: a biography by Eric Karpeles, and a book I’m covering today: “Inhuman Land: Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941–1942” (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). It’s a powerful and sobering read, and one which resonates in our fractured modern world. As I’ve mentioned before, Josef Czapski was a remarkable man. A polymath, his life took in painting, writing and essays as well as military and diplomatic careers. Czapski lived through the bulk of the 20th century; born in Poland in 1896, he was a student in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution, a…