My Name is Stramer

A richly evocative and moving portrait of an ordinary Polish Jewish family in the years preceding the Second World War.

A richly evocative and moving new novel following an ordinary Polish Jewish family in the years preceding the Second World War.

“Wise, world-weary and wry, and with an authenticity to its time that makes [this book] feel like a rediscovered classic.” —The Times

Though he returned from America penniless, Nathan Stramer still daydreams of a better life as he struggles to make ends meet back the small Polish town of Tarnów. Raising 6 children with his wife Rywka, he chases hare-brained schemes to make money while she fantasises about a trip to the seaside. Crammed into a 2-room apartment on down-at-heel Goldhammer Street, the family gets by on very little, and everyone has to pitch into Nathan’s latest ventures, including an ill-fated Stramer family café.

As the years pass, their children begin to take steps into a changing world. Rudek, the eldest, sets his passions aside for a practical job; Rena embarks on an affair with a married man, and Hesio and Salek become ever more involved with Communism.

While Nathan and Rywka try to hold the centre of their raucous family life together, national conflicts begin to escalate in Europe, and sinister forces creep into the Stramers'' world that they don''t yet understand.

Bursting with humour and pathos, My Name is Stramer is a beautiful, loving evocation of a vanished world. Internationally acclaimed as one of Poland’s foremost writers, Mikołaj Łoziński tells the tragic story of the interwar years through the ordinary triumhs and struggles of a sprawling Polish-Jewish family.