image of person or book cover 7985453080298027629.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon The Baker's Alchemy single work   novel   historical fiction   fantasy  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 The Baker's Alchemy
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'It’s Spring, 1870. The kindly Polish baker and widower, Ignacy Wadowski, cannot get his new young wife Jadwiga to make love with him. Ignacy asks a friendly Jewish healer who lives in the forest, for something to make him more attractive, but unexpectedly gets a potion that, while its effect lasts, makes him young again. Now courting Jadwiga as the youthful stranger Adalbert, Ignacy wins her love. The key moral dilemma is, while Ignacy is now enjoying his lawful wife, she’s enjoying a man she thinks isn’t her husband. Can one of them sin and the other not? The scheme begins to unravel when village gossip arises with sympathy for Ignacy - who’s being cuckolded by himself. The novel becomes an allegory, not just of all marriage and its difficulties, but of the expansion of consciousness available to a humble man, taking him into unsuspected realms of history, literature, national destiny and moral confrontation.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: To the memory of Aleksander Fredro, author of Husband and Wife, who made Poles laugh when there was not a lot to laugh about. 

  • Epigraph: O mickle is the powerful grace that lies 

    In plants, herbs, stones and their true qualities.

    -Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Blackheath, Blue Mountains, Sydney, New South Wales,: Brandl and Schlesinger , 2017 .
      image of person or book cover 7985453080298027629.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 280p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 1st November 2017
         

      ISBN: 9780994429568, 9780994429575

Works about this Work

[Review] The Baker's Alchemy JD , 2017 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 2-8 December no. 185 2017;

— Review of The Baker's Alchemy John Stephenson , 2017 single work novel

'Twenty-one years have passed since John Stephenson’s first novel, The Optimist. His long-overdue sophomore book comes in the unusual form of a Polish fable, The Baker’s Alchemy. Those expecting anything similar to his well-received chronicle of poet Christopher Brennan might at first be scratching their heads in puzzlement, but Stephenson possesses style and humour in spades, qualities that have fallen out of fashion in Oz lit.' (Introduction)

[Review] The Baker's Alchemy JD , 2017 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 2-8 December no. 185 2017;

— Review of The Baker's Alchemy John Stephenson , 2017 single work novel

'Twenty-one years have passed since John Stephenson’s first novel, The Optimist. His long-overdue sophomore book comes in the unusual form of a Polish fable, The Baker’s Alchemy. Those expecting anything similar to his well-received chronicle of poet Christopher Brennan might at first be scratching their heads in puzzlement, but Stephenson possesses style and humour in spades, qualities that have fallen out of fashion in Oz lit.' (Introduction)

Last amended 1 May 2018 10:29:46
Settings:
  • c
    Poland,
    c
    Eastern Europe, Europe,
  • 1870
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X