Orkan, Wladyslaw

(pen name of Franciszek Smreczyński). Born Nov. 27, 1875, in Poręba Wielka, Podhale; died May 14, 1930, in Kraków. Polish writer.

After studying in a Gymnasium in Kraków from 1888 to 1895, Orkan settled in the country. He first appeared in print in 1896. His best-known works—the short-story collections Stories (1898) and Above the Precipice (1900) and the novels Farm Laborers (1900; Russian translations, 1926 and 1951) and In the Glen (1903)—deal with social conflicts in the village. A sense of doom brought on by the crushing of the Russian Revolution of 1905–07 permeates the novel The Plague (1910) and the collection of poems Dead Stream (1912). Other important works include the short-story cycle Shepherd’s Love (1908), the novel In Olden Times (1912), the historical novel Kostka Napierski (1925; Russian translation, 1927), and the collection of ethnographic sketches and essays Letters From the Country (vols. 1–2, 1925–27).