Shmuel Yosef Czaczes, one of the finest writers of the 20th century, was born in 1888, in Buczacz, a small town in Galicia. Take out a large atlas and look up Buchach. You will find it in the Ukraine, about a hundred miles east of Ivano-Frankovsk (formerly Stanislav) and two hundred miles south-east of Lvov (formerly Lemberg). To the south-west lie the Carpathian mountains, and beyond them Transylvania. To the west and north, the eastern borders of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. To the north and east, the vast expanses of the Ukraine and of White Russia. At the back end of Eastern Europe, well this side of the Russia that tourists are allowed to visit, Galicia is now a forgotten zone, a part of old Europe whose existence we are not aware of and do not even know that we are not aware of. Perhaps it was always like that. In 1888, when Galicia still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the citizens of cosmopolitan Vienna must have looked on it as the ultimate backwater. It is where A Simple Story is set, most of the novel taking place in Szybusz - Buczacz in disguise.

LRB 4 September 1986 | PDF Download