The Homeless

This classic Polish novel, available in English for the first time, explores important themes of public health, economic inequality, and alienation in the age of industrializationNow that Tomasz Judym, a Jew from a slum in Warsaw, hasbecome a doctor he finds that his driving motivation to treat disadvantagedpeople like those he grew up with is at odds with the expectations of hispeers. His job is made constantly more difficult by the unhealthy working and livingconditions of the working class in turn of the century Warsaw. As he battlesalone to do the kind of work that boards of health and other agencies do today, Dr. Judym wrestles inwardly with his feelings of inferiority and revulsion causedby his difficult childhood. Meanwhile, his mission takes him out of the cityand into the countryside, bringing him into conflict with his other desires,and the love that he feels for a sympathetic woman whose background differsfundamentally from his own.The Homeless combines concrete detail about socialissues—the urgent need for public hygiene and access to medical treatment, theeffects of industrialization on health and the landscape, and the disinterestthat people in power have in the disadvantaged—with beautiful, artisticpassages of prose that sensitively probe the main characters’ inner lives. Thetitle comes not from the obvious reference to the impoverished people Dr. Judymconcerns himself with, but from status of the protagonist, the woman he loves,a mysterious engineer friend of his, his brother, andseemingly so many others who find themselves rootless—emotionally andphysically alienated by class divides and the social upheaval ofindustrialization. The Homeless is a portrait of the time and place it waswritten—Poland on the precipice of the twentieth century—that speaks to ourcurrent time and place. Beautifully translated by Stephanie Kraft, this new edition includes an Introduction by Jennifer Croft and Boris Dralyuk.