Konwicki was born in 1926 as the only son of Jadwiga Kieżun and Michał Konwicki inNaujoji Vilnia, where he spent his early childhood. His father died early and Konwicki lived with his great-aunt and great-uncle who he later depicted in his novels. He attended a localSigismund Augustus Gymnasium inVilnius.[citation needed]
Immediately following the outbreak ofWorld War II, Vilnius was occupied by theSoviet Union and subsequently byNazi Germany, and all education for Poles was discontinued.
Konwicki continued his studiesunderground and joined theHome Army's8th Oszmiana Brigade [pl] that took part inOperation Tempest andOperation Ostra Brama. He later disarmed and went into hiding from the Soviet Army. In November 1944, he joined Tur's (Witold Turonek) unit and fought until April 28, 1945 - one of the last guerrilla units in the area.[3] After the war Vilnius was occupied by theSoviet Union and Konwicki was expatriated.
In the spring of 1945 Konwicki moved toKraków, where he enrolled atJagiellonian University. He also started to work as a journalist atOdrodzenie weekly, moving toWarsaw in 1947 to continue his work for the magazine. In the capital, he was one of the leading advocates forSocialist Realism in literature. In 1948 he finished his memoirs of his partisan years (Rojsty), but the book was not published until 1956. His literary debut was theProdukcyjniak [pl] (production novel)Construction Site (1950,Przy budowie), which was followed by the novelPower (1954,Władza). His 1956 novelFrom a Besieged City (1956,Z oblężonego miasta) also became quite popular.
In the years 1952–1966 he was a member ofPolish United Workers' Party. By the mid-1950s, Konwicki had become disillusioned by the communist regime inPoland and fell out of grace with the party. His later works (beginning withA Hole in the Sky (1959,Dziura w niebie), are mostly concerned with the author's childhood and the semi-mythical, romantic land of his youth.
At this time Konwicki became the head of theKadr Film Studio and has since been recognized as one of the most notable members of thePolish Film School. However, his work veered away from the style pursued by his contemporaries, due to its uniquely bitter quality. As a filmmaker he is known for his Venice'58 Grand Prix winnerThe Last Day of Summer (Ostatni dzień lata, 1958),All Souls' Day (Zaduszki, 1961), as well as for his masterpiecesSalto (1962) andHow Far Away, How Near (Jak daleko stąd, jak blisko, 1973), as well as film adaptations: of Nobel Prize Winner Czesław Miłosz's bookIssa Valley (Dolina Issy, 1982), and of Adam Mickiewicz's dramaForefather's Eve –Lava (1989).
He is widely known for two novels, published by the Polish underground press:The Polish Complex (1977) andA Minor Apocalypse (1979).[4] The latter work, a bitter satire about a washed-up writer who is asked to burn himself in front of the Soviet-builtPalace of Culture and Science, Warsaw; the novel was adapted as a 1993 Frenchfeature film, directed byCosta-Gavras.A Minor Apocalypse is a post-Orwellian parody that refers to specific historical events, such as self-immolation protests against the communist regime byRyszard Siwiec in Poland andJan Palach inCzechoslovakia.
