Bøger af Jerzy E Henisz

A person got killed. Many lives, including the narrator's professional career, were twisted in result. The "London Accident" is a fascinating search for an answer: who did it? The search moves on from therapist's office to leading university department of psychiatry and law school, courts, asylum for criminally insane and finally ends up in the narrator's dining room. The perpetrator is not revealed until the very last page of the story. Nobody could have guessed until then.

Greorg, the narrator in two previous volumes of My Yankee Family moves to Whangarei, New Zealand to start a new chapter of his life. There he is arrested and charged with sexual molestation of Lolita, a girl resembling the heroine of Nabokov's novel. The country is in the mids of controversy about Coddington Index, just published. Initially the press publishes condemning stories about him but, gradually it comes to his help. Greorg is released from jail, publishes a controversial book and is invited to be a key-note speaker at the major international congress. He speaks in a hall decorated with swastikas. Now, a celebrity he is shot in the chest and almost dies. Old love story is interwoven with discussion of feminist movement and "the end of man" in western civilization.

This is the intimate account of a middle-aged American couple who ventured to Europe to buy a second house. Their search, their encounters with a foreign people, legal system, lawyers, tax codes, and customs, and their decisions to carry on with, or walk away from, difficult projects are all narrated in an easy-to-read style. This is more an adventure book that a travelogue, but it provides a handy toolbox for all who might wish to follow our lead and purchase a house in a foreign land. The book is an attempt to preserve the stories of the people who we have encountered in our journey. In the end, it was not the house but the experience of knowing these people that made the journey worthwhile. To make the narrative helpful to fellow travelers (those who are not interested in owning a house but still want to get to know Evora and Alentejo), I have solicited the help an archeologist by training and a native of Evora. She provided help where it was most needed: a wealth of practical information on where to go and what to do and on Portuguese history, culture, and language.

Patricia, a woman in her thirties attended a Halloween masquerade of: MY YANKEE FAMILY (see other novella by this author) staged in the family castle near Vienna. Impressed by the show she challenges the young author, Greorg, to go, with her on a trip to a foreign country of his choice. He accepts the challenge. They meet in London and proceed to go to Portugal. His expectations for an immediate romantic/sexual affair end in a disappointment. Elsie, an English girl with freckles fills the void. The longing for Patricia persists. When she offers to meet him in Paris he takes the second chance. Love and sex in Paris and Manhattan lead to an engagement. Elsie travels to Heidelberg but does not succeed in breaking an impending marriage. The couple travels to Galicia, Poland to repurchase Greorg's family homestead. The love story is interwoven with criminal investigation of two murders: Patricia's father and Greorg's grandfather. Outcomes of investigations may bring large monetary gains to both lovers and a huge disappointment to the third woman, Jennifer. Happy end is a big and totally unexpected outcome to all parties.

Young Austrian male embarks on a journey to United States in search of his family. He has only scant and contradictory information about his grandfather Leslav lost in the turmoil after WWII. The first search trip to US ends in a fiasco. Subsequently, with help of Jewish friends, he was able to find diary of his late grandfather. During the second trip the Austrian is able to interview the surviving members of his Yankee Family: grandfather's mistress Lydia, her daughter Claire, her son Tom. He also gets access to legal file of Lydia's husband, Milton. The novella is a series of psychological portraits of key members of the lost and distant family whose lives were mysteriously woven together. The Leslav's dairy brings to light his multiple identities: an aristocrat from Eastern Europe, a Volksdeutche collaborator, a mental patient in Swiss Psychoanalytical Clinic, a painter and a precursor of expressive abstractionists, an agent of clandestine Nazi organization placing and supporting former Nazi officials in Argentina after the war. He was also Lydia's lover and fathered two children by her. Lydia, grandfather's lover, an anorexic woman with three major love affairs in her life, also a psychoanalytic patient and a dedicated breeder of cows in upper New York State. Milton, Lydia's husband, a lawyer, businessman and CIA agent who ultimately takes to bed his own daughter Pat while convinced he was not her father. Claire, Lydia's daughter, whose major wish was to have a "normal life" which happened to be beyond her reach. Upon return to Austria all members of the Yankee Family are brought to life in a Halloween masquerade performed in the ruined chapel of the family castle. The author is a psychiatrist.

A novel emerged out of separately published stories: A young Austrian man embarks on a journey to US in search of his family. He was able to find diary of his late grandfather, Leslav. The dairy brings to light his multiple identities. He was also a lover of a married woman and fathered two children by her. Upon the narrator's return to Austria all members of the Yankee Family are brought to life in a Halloween masquerade. Patricia, his cousin, attended the masquerade. Impressed by the show she challenges the young author, to go, with her on a trip to a foreign country. He accepts the challenge. They meet in London and proceed to go to Portugal. His expectations for an immediate romantic/sexual affair end in a disappointment. Elsie, an English girl fills the void. The longing for Patricia persists. When she offers to meet him in Paris he takes the second chance. Love and sex in Paris and Manhattan lead to an engagement. Elsie travels to Heidelberg but does not succeed in breaking an impending marriage. The love story is interwoven with criminal investigation of two murders: Patricia's father Milton and Greorg's grandfather Leslav. Happy end is delayed by totally unexpected complications. Greorg, moves to Whangarei, New Zealand to start a new chapter of his life. There he is arrested and charged with sexual molestation of Lolita, a girl resembling the heroine of Nabokov's novel. The country is in the middle of controversy about Coddington Index, the list of sexual offenders, just published. Initially the press publishes condemning stories about Greorg but gradually comes to his help. Greorg is released from jail, publishes a controversial book about modern witch-hunting trials and is invited to be a keynote speaker at the major international congress. Now, a celebrity he is shot in the chest and almost dies. Old love gets the second chance. The story is interwoven with discussion of feminist movement and "the death of man" in western civilization.

A fictionalized history of one family over twelve hundred years in Europe. Starts withe Charlemagne and ends up with present day.

Georg Henisch (1549-1618) was one of the most outstanding Renaissance men and humanists in sixteenth-century "middle Europa." By the same token, he is practically unknown on the other side of Atlantic. Out of his 32 major and minor publications, only six found their way to Yale University's libraries, and a few others are scattered throughout other US universities. His name is not mentioned in major sixteenth-century source books written by American scholars except for credit given to him as an author of the first Thesaurus. The story starts (Chapter 1) in then upper Hungary, in a town then named Bartfeld. It was a rich town, then dominated by protestant German settlers, and governed by no-nonsense burghers who adhered to rigid moral standards and attempted to live their lives in fear of God and His judgment. Subsequently, the story moves to a parallel history of Augsburg, the town where Georg Henisch spent his entire adult life (1576-1618) and where he died and was buried. It is followed by a description of the education reform and its local implementation postulated by a Catholic Erasmus but fully implemented only by Lutheran followers (Chapter 3). Later, we move to the most outstanding sixteenth-century European university, that in Wittenberg, where our protagonist acquired his premedical education. It was, not by accident, the center where Martin Luther taught and preached and from where the "German heresy" spread like a wildfire through most of the Habsburg Empire and beyond (Chapters 4 and 5.) One of the students at Wittenberg was Georg Henisch's future employer, Hieronymus Wolf. His life, teachings, and writings had a profound impact on the development of Henisch's professional identity (Chapter 6.) Wolf was the one who recruited Henisch to come to Augsburg. But before Henisch settled down, he went to Leipzig, Paris, and Basel to earn his medical degree. His medical schooling is presented in Chapter 7 along with a description of and some reflections on sixteenth-century medical education. At Georg Henisch's time, one could not be a full master of any guild or profession unless he acquired wife and citizenship in the town. The story follows with the acquisition of both: marrying the daughter of an outstanding Augsburg pharmacist who practiced medicine on the side of his profession and gaining rights as a citizen of Augsburg (Chapter 8). The domestic life of the couple and taking care of their four children is a part of the same story. The other part is divided into four sections: his medical practice, teaching, and medical book translations (Chapter 9); his teaching and writing on such diverse subjects as rhetoric, mathematics, geography, astronomy, and philosophy (Chapter 10); his money-making publications of almanacs (Chapter 11); and, finally, his most outstanding accomplishments-making the first printed catalogue of a library and the creation of first-ever thesaurus for the German language, published in 1616 (Chapter 12). Most biographies must end with death. Little is known about his last two years of life as a widower. In official documents, he was described as a querulous old man, but the obituaries gave credit to his life-long teaching and contribution to the town's welfare and science. A latter invading French army ultimately erased his grave. It was a sad development for the man who believed that the German language maintained its purity from the time of the Tower of Babel until his time due to the fact that the German nation never succumbed to a foreign invasion. Finally it did, though it did not last for a very long time. The book is richly illustrated and has numerous references and footnotes but the text is free of academic and scholastic jargon.