Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz

Do you see what kind of a madhouse this town of Drohobycz is now, Dr Mann? People here never think and act as they should!Locked away in a dimly lit cellar in a provincial Polish town, the writer Bruno Schulz is composing a letter to Thomas Mann, warning him of a sinister impostor who has deceived the gullible inhabitants of Drohobycz. In return, he's hoping that the great writer might help him to escape - from his apocalyptic visions, his bird-brained students, the imminent Nazi invasion, and a sadistic sports mistress called Helena.In Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz, Biller blends biographical fact with surreal fiction to recreate the world as seen through the eyes of one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. The novella is published alongside two short stories by Schulz himself, 'Birds' and 'Cinnamon Shops'.



Maxim Biller (b. Prague, 1960) is the author of several novels, plays and collections of short stories, whose work has been compared to that of Philip Roth and Woody Allen. He is also a columnist and literary critic at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and Die Zeit.Bruno Schulz, the fictionalised protagonist of this novella, was a Polish-Jewish writer, artist and critic. Born in Drohobych in 1892, he was one of the world's great authors, although a substantial part of his work was lost following his murder by a Gestapo officer in 1942.