Maria Kuncewiczowa

Maria Kuncewiczowa was a Polish writer and novelist.

She studied music and literature in Kraków, Warsaw and Paris. She initially wrote for literary magazines under a pseudonym, and published her first book in 1926. In 1938 she was awarded the Gold Laurel (Złoty Wawrzyn) of the Polish Academy of Literature. After 1939 she lived in France, England and the United States. From 1962-1968, she lectured in Polish literature at the University of Chicago. Around 1969, she returned to Poland, to live in Kazimierz nad Wisłą, and in the years 1970-1984 she spent the winter months in Italy. She won a number of literary awards in Poland during her lifetime.

Her most famous work is Cudzoziemka (translated to English as The Stranger), considered one of the most prominent Polish psychological novels of the interwar period. Kuncewiczowa also wrote an English-language guide to Polish literature, Modern Polish Prose (1945) and edited an anthology of Polish contemporary literature in English, The Modern Polish Mind (1962). Her house in Kazimierz Dolny has been a branch of the Vistula River Museum since 2005.

Adapted from English and Polish Wikipedia.