The Promised Land

The Promised Land is one of the major works of Władysław Reymont, the Polish writer who won the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature, and stands alongside The Peasants as one of his two most important novels. Set in Łódź, Poland's textile-industry city, in the 1880s and 1890s, the novel follows three young men—Polish, German, and Jewish—who go into business together and rise and fall amid money and human relationships. The protagonist, the Polish industrialist Borowiecki, and the Jewish capitalist Moritz found a dyeing and printing factory and expand rapidly by squeezing workers and buying cheap and selling dear, drawing the combined opposition of the cotton-mill owner Scheier and the Jewish banker Grünspan; yet his closest partner, Moritz, watches from behind for his moment, hoping to seize the factory land in the event of a fire. Centered on Łódź—'the promised land in the hearts of fortune-seekers'—the book unfolds a social panorama of the raw accumulation of capital, where the weak are preyed upon and everyone schemes against everyone else: factory whistles, muddy streets, newly rich speculators, and unemployed and striking workers all share the stage. Reymont observed factory and street life in Łódź at first hand, and the bloody reality of the 1892 'Łódź riot' also found its way into his writing. The novel has thus been called 'the Polish Midnight,' exposing the cold logic of capital while retaining a hope for integrity, fellowship, and human dignity. In 1975 it was adapted into a film of the same name, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.