The street of crocodiles
This a magical book of short stories set in a small town in Poland during the period between the two World Wars. The writer, Bruno Schulz, wrote only two books in his lifetime but the two are so rich in vision that they contain a whole world. There are wonderful stories of childhood and how a child's imagination transforms the world; and there are more sombre tales with a sort of Kafkaesque feel to them. The author was also a graphic artist and illustrated his books with very high-quality etchings and lithographs that depict life in his town. As a curious aside, his books began as stories he told in the margins of letters he wrote to a friend. She encouraged him to expand on these little tales and the results were truly beautiful. In short, Bruno Schulz is one of the best little-known writers (little known in North America, that is, because I think he is more acknowledged in Europe)
Stats for nerds
5recommend
10mentions
7people
2017–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I took the last week and a half off work. I've been reading a great book - "Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schulz.
After six years at the same company, I started realizing I might be ready for a move, but I'm not interview-ready, so I started brushing up on system design, python/leetcode stuff, and other stuff.
It's been interesting to use claude to generate study guides, and even "books" related to technical topics, and send them to my kindle for reading while out for a nice long walk.
- The only book. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.
- I adore Schulz's works: dreamlike and touching. `Street of Crocodiles` is a great place to start.
- This won't be helpful to anybody, least of all you, but I'm like 2 stories in ("August" and "Visitation") and this is so Neutral Milk Hotel that I sort of assume Jeff Mangum stole all his lyrics from Schulz.
To anyone else here: you can get Street of Crocodiles off the Internet Archive and it's a quick read (at least so far).
- Also got sucked into Street of Crocodiles (Penguin Classics translation) due to dang's bio. My favorite story is Cinnamon Shops; a few minutes into reading it, and I'm relaxed, like a kind of meditation.
- Finding this level of appreciation of Schulz is unexpected, even in these small numbers.
I have 6 books¹ on the shelf above my bed. One is The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz reprint. I acquired it because I never resolved losing the copy of Street of Crocodiles that I carried around in my late teens and early twenties. Nothing else ever tweaked my perceptions like that did.
¹: Four are on my read list. The remaining book is The Secret Teaching of All Ages by Manly P. Hall. It's illustrations self-explain why it is there.
