SOURCE: A review of New World Avenue and Vicinity, in World Literature Today, Vol. 65, No. 4, Autumn, 1991, p. 734.

In the review below, Wilson describes the subject, tone, and style of New World Avenue.

Today Tadeusz Konwicki is one of Poland's most respected literary personalities. He loves conversation and is known for his acerbic wit, often expressed over coffee at the little café located in the basement of his Warsaw publisher, Czytelnik. Czytelnik's offices are a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Nowy Swiat (New World Avenue), the focal point of the writer's present existence. The busy thoroughfare with its old-fashioned charm and modern vitality contrasts with Konwicki's other main creative axis: prewar Wilno (Vilnius) and its environs, where the writer grew up and which he left in 1945 after participating in the underground resistance movement. When Konwicki evokes nature in his work, he tends to re-create (and idealize...