When the country is on the verge of collapse, it is necessary to act. There are intrigues between dramatic events. It is extremely difficult to make the right decision. This is the perfect time to bear witness to courage, friendship, bravery and love.
The year 1794. The last months of the existence of the First Polish Republic. Uście Solne - a sleepy town in the Austrian partition. His old friend, an artillery officer, Julian Zakrzeński, comes to Stanisław Krzysztofczyk, a blacksmith and former non-commissioned officer, and tries to convince him to participate in the upcoming insurrection. Krzysztofczyk initially refuses, but later events will force him unexpectedly to complete his friend's mission and thus to participate in the uprising.
Piotr Śliwiński's Ryngraf is an insurgent epic in which there is a beautiful and tragic love, a dark intrigue and an attack on Kościuszko, and next to fictional characters there is a whole galaxy of historical figures, with King Stanisław August, Prince Józef, priest Kołłątaj and Colonel Kiliński.
In the story of love and war, facts and sensational threads intertwine, and the eponymous gorget is the carrier of a mysterious riddle. The reader has never had the opportunity to observe so closely the dramatic events of the Kościuszko Uprising. "Ryngraf" by Piotr Śliwiński is written in sophisticated Polish, enriched with Old Polish vocabulary, numerous Latin phrases, blunt terms and a solid dose of sense of humor.
You will find all this in the book by Piotr Śliwiński, entitled "Ryngraf" (Muza 2017).
The tears ran to the eyes and soaked the shaggy beard. Krzysztofczyk, although he is no longer a boy or a young man, has grown up like snot and barely grew back from the ground. He saw marches and skirmishes, great battles, when they clashed with the Muscovite on bayonets, all on the other side of the Vistula, where the school was once unfinished, because it was interrupted by the sudden need to escape into an independent world, and half Gypsy, camp life under the tents on maneuvers near Gołębie, and the Ujazdowski Castle, where barracks stood.
A friend, who came last night, destroyed all the existing, apparent peace, the bedrock of silent desperation and reconciliation with the fate guided by the greats of this world. Memories and desires for adventure, for which both were capable of the greatest madness, were revived. This time, however, it was not about the adventure, but the greatest gamble, on the balance of which lay the good of a mother torn and trampled by three black eagles, each year thinner and diminished, debased and disgraced, made a mockery of neighboring powers. The land of the Piasts, Jagiellons, Batory and Sobieski grew into an ulcer with a foul-smelling pus on which they used the sell-off scoundrel as if they were a cheap whore.
- excerpt from the book
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Piotr Śliwiński - a graduate of Polish studies at the Jagiellonian University, he made his debut with the novel "Dziki Kąt" (Czarne, Wołowiec 2007). A press and radio journalist, he was a juror of the 14th edition of the Anna Kamieńska for a collection of poetry (Krasnystaw, May 2008) and for the 22nd edition of the "Debiut" Literary Competition (Zamość, February 2010). He lives in Kraków with his wife and two daughters. He writes another book after hours.
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