Penguin has published two books by Polish authors in its new series comprising ten Central European Classics.

Proud to be a Mammal is a collection of essays taken from Native Realm and several other books by Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004). They deal with his passion for poetry, his love of the Polish language and his happy childhood. In 1980 Miłosz won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Elephant is a collection of short stories by Sławomir Mrożek. Born in 1930, he is Poland’s most internationally renowned playwright and essayist. One of his early books, published in 1957, The Elephant is a satire on life in Poland under a totalitarian system.

Penguin writes in its publicity material: “The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrożek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.”

Mrożek best-known plays are Tango, The Emigrees, The Ambassador and Love in the Crimea. (mk)