Breza, Tadeusz

Born Dec. 31, 1905, in Siekierzyńce; died May 19, 1970, in Warsaw. Polish writer.

Breza made his literary debut with the psychological novel Adam Grywald (1936). In the novels Walls of Jericho (1946) and Heaven and Earth (vols. 1-2, 1949-50), he exposed the ruling circles of bourgeois-landlord Poland before World War II (1939-45). The center of the novel Balthazar’s Feast (1952; State Prize, 1952) is the figure of a young intellectual in postwar Poland. In the book The Bronze Gates (1960; State Prize, 1968) and the novella The Department (1960; Russian translation, The Labyrinth) he penetratingly and subtly unmasked life in the Vatican.