Drs. Chong and Zak are Professors of Electrical Engineering at Purdue, and Dr. Chong was the instructor for the ECE grad level optimization class when I took it spring '97. The book alone is good, detailed and rigorous enough for a graduate course without sacrificing readability or in-chapter examples. However, without the MATLAB examples that were developed by the authors to accompany lectures and illustrate each optimization method covered, the material might be a little abstract or dry for self-teaching. An excellent introduction or reference nonetheless, those without a solid base in linear algebra should keep a reference text handy while reading.

An Introduction to Optimization

This book is great, although I'm not too crazy about the translation. Realistically though, if you're not planning on learning to speak Polish fluently anytime soon, you should get this copy. It's not that bad. Lem is a great, realistic, down-to-earthy (no pun intended) Science Fiction author. Also get Solaris,...and Fiasco.

Lem, as always, comes through. In some of his other work he takes on philosophy, science, religion, usually with a humorous strain; in this book, and its predecessor, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, he chooses to write straight hard SF. However, the image usually conjured up by 'hard' SF is Asimov, Heinlen, and so on, meaning writing anchored on scientific devices and with generally far less time spent on character development. Pirx is a welcome antidote. He is an engineer and pilot, grounded in a reality made up not of quantum-physical theories but of nuts and bolts. He's a professional and strictly blue-collar. REading this book might give you an idea of what the future REALLY will be like.

An impressive science fiction thriller, despite the fact that my Ace paperback edition is an English translation of a German translation of a Polish novel.

A military spacecraft lands on an unexplored planet to determine the whereabouts of a lost crew. The story resembles the film ALIENS in some ways, and also the Niven-Pournelle-Barnes novel LEGACY OF HEOROT; although this novel predates those other stories by a few decades. A better way to describe it is to call it a horror novel in a Perry Rhodan vein, for those of you who are old enough and pathetically geeky enough to benefit from that reference. It employs many elements of space opera: laser guns, antimatter cannon, force fields, atomic combat, and other such special effects commonly found in Perry Rhodan and Doc Smith's LENSMAN. But this one has a much creepier tone to it than what you'd expect from space opera.

The theme to the book is similar to that of other Lem novels, like SOLARIS and THE INVESTIGATION, where the heroes find themselves up against increasingly complex and frustrating phenomena. I liked this one better than those two, however. Recommended, but you'll have to look to find a copy.

A rather common theme in Lems writing (Solaris, Fiasco) is human encounter with an alien, fundamentally incomprehensible civilisation or "organism". In Lem's view such an encounter is likely to escalate to the level of destruction or surrender because human motives and interpretations are with necessity confined within human frames of reference, no form of closer understanding is possible. In "Invincible" an expedition shall find out the fait of a previous lost expedition. The aggressor (the result of a very particular form of evolution) this time is the alien being a deadly threat because of human presence (or rather, human technology) only. The plot unfolds with many twists and turns typical of Lem and is good entertainment for anyone liking Solaris or Fiasco.

I read this after "Eden" and found it to be an interesting book, for it deals with an alien life form which is complex and strange. As in all his books, Lem explores human understanding of a foreign world.

The collection of essais (forewords or afterwords) on non-existent major books of our future. Perfect food for thought, but rather bleak in reading comfort - a little bit too dry and condensed. It's not a blood thriller(s), even if dissecting thrilling matters.
Anyway, it is a must for any real SF fan. Especially after Star diaries, Futurologic congress and things like Peace on Earth and Fiasco.

Creative and thought-provoking, Lem delves into the realm of the "unwritten." Being both playful and serious at the same time, this book is very smart.

I forget when I discovered Lem - in college? -- but A PERFECT VACUUM remains one of my favorite works and I'm delighted it's still in print (it may have been out of print once). Lem packages a collections of fake book reviews of nonexistent books, written in a delightful broad array of styles and voices. His wry humor lights every page. He includes a scathing review of his own book !! Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys satires and highbrow whimsy. (If you like this, try Julian barnes: Foucault's Parrot, or,History of the world in 10.5 chapters.

Stanislaw Lem is one of my favorite writers and this book is a lot of fun to read, but it isn't the best Lem book (not all of his books can be 5 star masterpieces). Read Cyberiad first (if you like short, interesting and funny tales) since this book seems a little like left-overs in comparison.

This is surely one of the greatest collections of 'linked short-stories' ever written -- it matches Calvino's COSMICOMICS and Borges' LABYRINTHS. Lem is a total genius. A writer of playful little fables that are also philosophically profound (and logically consistent). This book is a brilliant companion to Lem's THE CYBERIAD, with which it shares many themes and ideas. Lem has a beautiful style: he can make engineering terms sound poetic. His rigorously modern metaphors are as original as those of J.G. Ballard, but more varied and lyrical. For Lem, the Periodic Table is an unwritten poem. This book is the final and true ode, and each line is a fantastic, fabulous, incredible story. I give this book 200,000,000 stars. And that's only because I'm not feeling so generous today. It probably deserves A GOOGOLPLEX (1 to the power of 100 raised to the power of 1 to the power of 100) of stars. At least.

The Fairy Tale aspect of these tales may seem tiresome at first, but as you chew into these stories you discover that the annoyance is intentional and satirical. We are flawed, and often silly, machines; flailing about in a universe devoid of meaning and purpose. If anything, get this book for the stories "The Mask" and "The Hunt"; they are Lem's Finest.

I was disappointed by this book, but then my expectations were very high after reading Yergin's earlier work on the history of the oil industry (5 stars!). Early on, the authors present us with a historical dilemna: the post World War II nations are distrustful of market economies and experiencing prosperity under centralized, planned economies. Yet market economies take over in a matter of decades. The authors use the strategy of a broad, global view to explain why and how -- with most of the emphasis on how. As a result, the reading is quite repetetive. The thesis is clear: market economies work best. There is almost no discussion on the limitations of market economies -- or of their social consequences. Worse, for those like myself with no background in economics, the implications of the emerging global free-market economy is virtually untouched. My advice... read "The Prize".

As an Easterner, I could not understand the impact of F. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" on economic development when I first read that book. Fortunately, "The Commanding Heights" provides me with the answer - Planned economy becomes the mainstream of Western societies after World War II and the system had brought these countries economic prosperity for several decades. There was a danger that the policy makers would think the system is a " cure-all" medicine. Free marketers such as Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman had to battle under that tough environment. Hayek's work however opens up the mind of Mrs. Thatcher and provides the foundation for the Renaissance of individualism.
"The Commanding Heights" is a book of economic history after World War II. The book covers the economic transformation of regions or countries such as U.S.A., Western Europe, Central Europe, Britain, China, India, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The background and achievement of key politicans and economists are also contained extensively. The messages of the books are clear - Free market economic system is better than planned economy and government's role should be shifted from market player to referee.
While I agree that the book is highly readable, some pieces are missing, still. Readers cannot find story of developed African countries such as South Africa and Egypt. If you want to know the economic history of the Middle East, you must be prepared to be disappointed. In addition, as the book is descriptive in nature, in-depth analysis on why centrally planning suddenly turns sour is lacking. These are my reasons that the book is rated as a four-star instead of five-star publication.
In all, the authors have done a tremendous job in the subject. This book should be short-listed as one of the textbooks for students studying economics or history.

The political upheavals of the last 50 years have created a broad array of economic challenges in the areas of international trade, global finance, the monetary system, economic justice, and economic development. If the end of World War II began an ambitious experiment in the foundation of a global economic order, the fragmentation of the old empires initiated a multitude of unique historical experiences with economic development. "The Commanding Heights" captures this rich and exciting history better than any other text I'm aware of. Its strengths are many.

The authors do a great job getting at the fundamental conflicts over economic philosophy and economic theory that have shaped the shifting consensus over the proper relationship between the state and the market. There's little economic theory here, but non-economists and economists alike will find the battle of economic ideas engrossing.

The book is divided by region and by historical period, and each unique narrative focuses on the dominant personalities that have dominated economic experience. The seemingly dry topic of economic history is animated by exiting descriptions of the fascinating political and personal struggles in which this history is embedded. Filled with fascinating anecdotes and compelling historical explanations, "The Commanding Heights" brings the global economy to life.

"The Commanding Heights" is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and it's ultimately impossible for certain topics to be covered in satisfying detail. Chronology is vague and confusing at times, and the economic experiences of more marginal economic experiences, such as certain countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, are painted in such broad strokes that detailed information is lost in the rhetorical grandeur. While the book is comprehensive, it is by no means exhaustive, and readers wanting economic and historical specifics will find themselves frustrated and yearning for a greater level of detail. But this is not necessarily a weakness (this is first and foremost and introductory text) - the book succeeds in exciting the reader to explore the more detailed texts in the bibliography. Every chapter left me wanting to know more.

Perhaps unfortunately, "The Commanding Heights" exhibits a stark free-market bias, privileging growth over equity and paying very little attention to Soviet economics. Often the authors fall into the trap of describing history as a series of events justifying the present-day mainstream of economic thinking. These authors clearly love the minimal state, and are willing to indulge in Keynesianism, but anything beyond a modest welfare state is treated mostly as a historical mistake rather than a meaningful economic experiment. The economics are on the authors' side, but more reading is necessary for a more inclusive perspective.

In sum, this book is a great introduction. It will make you want to read more about economic theory, economic institutions, and the history of the countries discussed in this text. It's a wonderful point of departure, and its strength is that it will inspire the reader to go far beyond. I never imagined economic history could be so engrossing.

The first thing I read by Lem was _Solaris_, which is a unique book in his canon. It's a very serious, psychological novel in many respects. _Eden_, the second book I read by him, shares the sense of total alienness that seems to be one of Lem's main themes. The ship-wrecked space traveling scientists who function as the protagonists, basically try to figure out the world on to which they've crash landed. The exploration leads to all sorts of bizarre landscapes and situations that seem to have no logic. And, again, that's the author's point. This alien landscape is ALIEN. Saying more about the book's contents would be a cheat to the reader, and my slim description of the novel's main ideas certainly doesn't do _Eden_ justice. I wouldn't recommend this as a first book for someone who has never read Lem, but his writing is well worth sampling since he has used a number of different approaches (humorous, satirical, philisophical) and can't be appreciated from the reading of just one or two novels

Much of Stanislaw Lem's writings are hampered by a wide number of translations of varying quality. The inherent problem with the translation of Eden takes place in the first half of the novel where there is a stiffness to the wording used. In the beginning of Eden the translator seems to have chosen the most obscure word or phrase possible to substitute for original Polish. Thankfully as the novel progresses so does its readability as the translator hits his stride about 1/3 of the way through.

Using the theme of alien contact, Lem's Eden is superficially similar to his classic Solaris. Scientists and crew from a ship crash land and are stranded. They survive in the midst of a strange world upon which is an even stranger civilization. The crew sets out to explore and decipher the culture of the planet and like Solaris it's not a question of misunderstanding but a more basic question of determining what it is they are observing.

Eden doesn't reach the heights of personal philosophical musings that Solaris does. And while the characters are one-dimensional they work well within the framework of a story whose central theme is less what makes us human than how that humanity shapes our perceptions. If you like Stanilslaw Lem or a fan of SF you'll find Eden a rewarding novel and worth your time.

I've only read three books by Lem counting this one and while nothing so far has bypassed Solaris as his absolute masterpiece, for me it's a step up from the strangely dense Fiasco. As in those two books the theme here is the one that Lem seems to count as his favorite, that we should not assume that because we are smart and can get into space and across stars, that we can automatically "understand" any alien life that we come across, or even start to fit what we see into established human preconceptions. Fortunately this is an excellent theme to explore and one rarely dealt with in SF, so Lem easily finds new wrinkles to explore every time he writes about it, even if the conclusions wind up being nearly the same every time. In this novel, six explorers crashland on the planet Eden and while trying to fix their spaceship and get off they find that the planet is home to a civilization that seems to make absolutely no sense. They keep coming across odd artifacts, a strange factory, a graveyard, weird villages, all of which they try to quantify through human theories that they wind up discarding anyway because they can't hope to explain what they're seeing. Most of the book is just strange, unexplainable event piled on strange unexplainable event . . . perhaps because I read it in spurts this approach never becomes wearying, or maybe it's the constant combinations of interactions between the six characters, three of which comes across as fully rounded human beings (The Captain, the Doctor and the Engineer, the only one who seems to have a proper name, oddly enough) while the Chemist, the Physicist and the Cyberneticist mostly just take up space and are there for the main three to argue with, that keeps the plot moving along and engaging. In the end there are explanations of a sort, but they seem anticlimatic and feel a bit like a cop out, a concession to readers not really prepared for the honest answer that maybe there really is no way to understand something utterly alien. All told, Lem's imagination and presentation of his argument is impressive and mostly entertaining, even if you have to read Solaris to get a better idea of what he's trying to say.

"Imaginary Magnitude"'s value as entertaining literature is essentially nil. Only occasionally does it lapse into readability - otherwise it is an undiluted philosophical treatise. To be sure, this is Lem at his most intellectual - it just doesn't lend the writing the same measure of livelihood his more straightforward pieces do. The format is quite something conceptually - a set of introductions to not-yet-written books. "Imaginary Magnitude" showcases four - plus "GOLEM XIV", which, being a separate piece of literature altogether, is included only for the sake of its similar spirit.

The short pieces themselves aren't particularly exciting. This is Lem's chance to preach his views, and he does so extensively. "Necrobes" piqued my interest with its laconic treatment of creatively-posed x-ray nudes as art. "Eruntics" was even partially plausible - it deals with evolving a genome which is, basically, word-processing software. And then the bateria begin predicting the future. The "Extelopedia" lacked any sort of real structure - it is an encyclopedic dictionary of purely prognosticated words. The introduction includes a "Proffertinc" - a prognosticated offer, and a sample page of words that begin with "prog-". The following introduction to a treatise on bitic literature - that is, books written by non-human authors - is an excellent piece of short fiction dealing with epistemological topics. The summary traces the development of artificial thinkers through several stages - from cladogenesis, where computers generate random meaningless words, through mimesis, where a computer formulates the mathematical basis of books, allowing perfect translations, and even creating entirely new works in the author's exact style, and to transhuman apostasy - works generally incoprehensible to humans - from incredibly complicated math to elaborate works on cosmogony.

Then the reader gets to "GOLEM XIV", and the book takes a nosedive. Even despite the warning, the superhuman, impersonal intelligence within the computer seems snobbish, patronizing, and the text of its lectures - overly elaborate and peppered with metaphors. Likewise, the leading points of the two lectures - on man and on itself - coincide: the evolution is an asymptotic blunder; it has reached the maximum level of complication in its creations, and further random "progress" is impossible; man has reached his potential ceiling and is drowning in his civilization, etc. Like most of Lem, taken piece by piece this is profound theorizing, but as a work of creative, non-academic literature it is ornate and unreadable.

Though it wasn't the most entertaining book of Lem's, it definitely gives the best span of his talents of any that I've yet read. We get the simply goofy in the first couple bits, and the hard-core philosophical in the GOLEM lectures. This is an excellent survey of Lem's talent, but the individual parts are not his best. The humorous bits are certainly not "Cyberiad" or "Star Diaries" quality, but they are good nonetheless. The GOLEM stuff is a bit dry, but very intruiging. Overall quite good stuff, so it gets 4 stars. Mediocre Lem though.

Whereas with "A Perfect Vacuum" Lem wrote reviews of fictional books, here he writes introductions to different fictional books. You get some of his more straightforward philosophy with "Golem XIV," typical Lem cleverness with "Necrobes" and sheer, amazing, mind-blowing virtuosity with "Eruntics," probably his single most impressive piece of short fiction. This "story" alone is worth the price of admission. Ranking near the Tichy stories, with plenty of distance between "The Cyberiad" on one side and "Solaris" on the other, on the fun and ponderousnness scales. Among his best.

For the love of all that is decent, I don't know why "Further Reminiscences" hasn't been combined with "The Star Diaries" to make one handy volume. First of all, thdestinction is essentially artificial - "Further Reminiscences" contains two journeys which were dropped, for one reason or another, from the American edition of the Diaries, a selection of Earthside "reminiscences", a short called "Doctor Diagoras", and the fantastic "Let Us Save the Universe", all of which were present in the original Polish edition. Even the books' sizes favor an omnibus re-issue (250 and 150 pages, respectively).

The two "new" journies found in this book are the eighteenth and the twenty-eighth. The 18th is essentially a shorter, more readable version of the 20th (found in the parent volume), and the classic, oft-reprinted 28th deals with personal freedoms (the Phools and the Master Machine that was created to mediate their conflicts - and thus decides to refabricate them in stone to stop their chaotic quarrels).

The five "further reminiscences" are essentially humorless essays, each dealing with a specific philosophical idea. In each, Tichy comes into contact with some sort of scientific visionary (be it Corcoran, Decantor, Zazul, or Molteris), and, after ascertaining that they aren't insane, listens to their wild stories: Corcoran constructs mechanical brains whose lives and fate are mere recordings in a large steel drum; Decantor wants to immortalize the soul by encasing it in crystal; Zazul tells the gruesome story of his attempt to clone himself; Molteris produces a functional time machine, and, without examining the possible consequences, tests it on himself. It is apparent that these were written at the same time as the journeys, since the 20th has a direct reference to Molteris. "Doctor Diagoras" is not a certified "reminiscence", although it is essentially identical in spirit, the topic of debate being artificial intelligence (the fifth reminiscence is very similar to the 11th journey, only in reverse and with more legal issues).

The volume closes with "Let Us Save the Universe", which is a detailed petition to conserve intergalactic flora and fauna, with several quite hilarious examples of how we foul up the planets, and how some species manage to retaliate.

In a nutshell? A worthwhile read - far from a worthwhile purchase.

"Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy," by Stanislaw Lem, has been translated into English by Joel Stern and Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek. The main text is preceded by a publisher's note, which declares that contents of this book (my review refers to the Harvest edition published by Harcourt, Brace & Co.) appeared in the 1971 Polish edition of the book entitled "The Star Diaries," but not in the British and American editions with the same title. Thus this book could be seen as the second volume of Lem's original Polish "Star Diaries." Despite all this, I believe that this book works fine as a stand-alone literary work, so go ahead and ignore the publisher's note if you like.

The book is divided up into several sections, each of which could stand alone as a short story. Each piece is told in the first person by space traveler Ijon Tichy. He discusses his voyages beyond the Solar System and his encounters with an assortment of eccentric scientists on Earth.

"Memoirs" is a delightful, pungent blend of science fiction, philosophy, satire, and horror. Witty and haunting, funny and frightening, it's spiced by clever wordplay.

Lem deals with such topics as artificial intelligence, time travel, environmental exploitation, the nature of the human soul, and the origins of the universe. He describes many whimsical extraterrestrial species, such as the foul-tailed fetido and bottombiter chair ants. Overall, this wacky, surreal book shows Lem to be a soul brother to Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Seuss, and Kurt Vonnegut.

If you have never read a Lem story before, then I highly recommend this novel as a starting point. In this book of short stories, Lem is at at his artful best. Startlingly simple and surprisingly shrewd, the stories expound upon many of the ageless questions which humanity as a whole have attempted to deal with since the beginning of consciousness i.e. genesis of man, existence of spirit/soul, man's primal instinct to destruct etc. In short, this collection of stories serve as a delicious sample of the smorgasboard of creative delights that Lem is known for. His acerbic wit, intellectual prowess, and devastatingly entertaining drollness are all apparent within this collection. A great read written in true Lem "virtuoso" form. Indeed, if one were so inclined, this is the place to start looking for answers to the 'meaning of life'. And even if you do not find the 'ultimate' answer within the pages of this novella/collection of works, at least you can be sure of being entertained!

I got half-way through and quit; the book just didn't work for me. Prus obviously intended to write "realistically", and his rather disconnected deployment of scenes and character development does mimic the complexities of real life. So, in that sense, he was a success.

However, he completely fails on much more important levels. For example, the plot lacks even a hint of conflict. Wolkulski (the main character) faces no conflict as he gives in to his obsession for Izabella, nor does he seem to have any particular difficulty in achieving any of his foolish stunts to try to win her. Since it's obvious from the start the relationship is doomed, there's not the tension of "will he get the girl?" Not even the obvious potential friction of his being a class-crossing social climber creates any conflict (other than a few characters commenting on his boorish manners). A 600+ page book needs more conflict than that to justify itself. I could not uncover the purpose of reading (or of having written) the book.

Prus endows "The Doll" with the trappings of realist novels: frightening descriptions of the lowest of the poor, moral angst of rich do-gooders over the poor in their midst, endless analogies between streetwalkers and Mary Magdelene or poor men and Christ, and a vast panorama of characters representing all levels of society. However, Prus does not use these devices to move his story. They seem more like window dressing put in place to make the novel look and smell like the work of a realist.

Worst of all, Prus' story and characters don't seem to have any relevance beyond the pages of his book and there's no whiff of meaning anywhere. The best example of this odd characteristic is the anti-Semitism in the book. There are lots of cuts (broadly and with subtle acid) at the Jewish characters, however (as another reviewer mentions) Prus never addresses anti-Semitism in even the most vague way. He presents society only and makes no comments or suggestions to the reader. A newspaper article works as better fiction than that!

Reading this book was a bit like watching a movie you already know the ending to. It can be entertaining if the ride is interesting. Unfortunately, Prus' narrative is too dry and dispassionate and his plotting too erratic and minimalistic for the ride to pull you in. As a result, I just didn't care what was going on and didn't find any of the characters worthy of my attention. I didn't feel there was any purpose in reading the rest of the book.

Boleslaw Prus' The Doll falls into a category of books which could be described as peripheral realism. They are late 19th century novels which share nothing in common except that they are written in countries which are in the "periphery" of world literature. This is not a comment on their quality, but on the lack of curiosity of the Anglo-American mind to take the trouble to encounter them. Other examples of this trend are the Spaniard Benito Perez Galdos, the Portuguese writer Jose Maria de Eca de Quieros and the Italians Giovanni Verga and Antonio Fogazzaro.

"The Doll" is not of the same quality as such works as "Fortunata and Jacintha", "The Maias," or even "The Little World of the Past." Supposedly it is the story of a successful businessman who tries and fails to win the heart of a shallow, spoiled, aristocratic girl--the doll of the title. It is this story, but there is more to it than that, more than what Prus thinks. When the protagonist Stanislaw Wokulski is not worrying ineffectively over Izabela Lecki, he is a smashingly successfully businessman. Why he is so succcessful is not really made clear, Prus does not have Balzac's eye for describing complex financial transactions in compelling ways. Wokulski is obviously a good employer and obviously a man of charitable and humane impulses. The woman he assists, and whom his clerk thinks would be a better wife, Mrs. Sawatska, is a rather conventional portrait of female virtue. If there is anything truly "Dickensian" in this book, as the dust jacket promises, it is not Prus' sense of detail, which is meagre, or a fine talent for grotesquerie or wit, but instead the conventional, rather vapid portrait of his heroes. The style is prosaic, the social atmosphere rather narrow, and people wanting to learn about the urbanity or religious life or common people or entertainments of 19th century Warsaw should look elsewhere.

There is one passage that is an exception to this. It really is remarkable, the one that portrays Izabela's complete isolation from the real world. "If anyone had asked her point-blank what this world is, and what she herself was, she would have certainly have repled that the world is an enchanted garden full of magical castles, and that she herself was a goddess or nymph imprisoned in a body.

"From her cradle, Izabela had lived in a beautiful world that was not only superhuman but even supernatural. For she slept in feathers, dressed in silks and satins, sat on carved and polished ebony or rosewood, drank from crystal, ate from silver and porcelain as costly as gold.

"The seasons of the year did not exist for her, only an everlasting spring full of soft light, living flowers and perfumes. The times of day did not exist for her either, since for whole months at a time she would go to bed at eight in the monring and dine at two at night. There was no difference in geographical location, since in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin or London she would find the same food--soups from Pacific seaweed, oysters from the North Sea, fish from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, animals from every country, fruits from all parts of the globe. For her, even the force of gravity did not exist, since her chairs were placed for her, plates were handed, she herself was driven in carriages through the streets, conducted inside, helped upstairs."

As for other parts of the novel, there is a continuing theme of anti-semitism as Wokulski and his colleagues notice with some concern its rise. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear whether Wokulski or Prus fully recognize its evil or whether they share some of it themselves. On a first glance Wokulski is a hard working businessman, the kind that Poland obviously needs, who is not appreciated by its inefficient aristocracy. They look down on him as an arriviste and the selfish, vapid Izabela either ignores him or toys with his feelings. But on another level Wokulski is not really attracted to her. He is in more in love with the concept of matrimony than with an actual person. It is not simply the conservative atmosphere around courting that hampers him, but Wokulski's own lack of force. This portait of Wokulski's ambiguity, an almost Hamlet like quality of indecision, does not make compelling reading. But it is an important portrait of impotent masochism and it is expertly done. It is this that establishes Prus' claim to greatness.

If you have any interest in European Literature, then this novel is worthwile reading. All the major characters are beautifully created; the feelings that they experience are very realistic. The author's style is very powerful, and the plot is interesting enough to keep you reading until the spectacular conclusion. Easily one of the best books I've ever read.