Writer and graphic artist, whose brief career ended tragically during World War II, when he was gunned down by a German officer in the ghetto of Drohobycz. Schulz is best-known for his short stories. His is considered one of the finest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century. The American writer John Updike has called Schulz "one of the great transmogrifies of the world into words."

"I am simply calling it The Book without any epithets or qualifications, and in this sobriety there is a shade of helplessness, a silent capitulation before the vastness of the transcendental, for no word, no allusion, can adequately suggest the shiver of fear the presentiment of a thing without name that exceeds all our capacity for wonder. " (from 'The Book' in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1937)

Bruno Schulz was born in Drohobycz (now Drogobych, Ukraine), a small town in Galicia, into a Jewish family. The area was then part of the Austrian Empire. His father run a clothing shop, but left it to the care of his wife due to his poor health. Also a very important figure in the house was the sadistic maid. Schulz studied architecture at Lvov University and fine arts in Vienna, specializing in lithography and drawing. After returning to his native town, he worked from 1924 to 1939 as an art teacher in the local gymnasium. One of his students has later recalled that Schulz was considered strange; he was laughed at behind his back. Schulz always wore a flannel jacket and a scarf around his neck. After his friend Wladyslaw Riff died of tuberculosis in 1927, Schulz stopped writing prose for years. The sanitary officers, who disinfected Riff's lodgings, burned all of his manuscripts and his letters from Schulz.

Schulz did not start his literary career until the 1930s. His reviews appeared in literary magazine Wiadomosci Literackie, he corresponded with such avant-gardists as Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), but mostly Schulz lived far from the literary circles. In the mid-1930s he spent some time in Warsaw and visited also Paris. Although Schulz's correspondence with the Yiddish poet Deboah Vogel and other women was intense, he never married.

In 1938 Schulz was awarded the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland from the West and the remainder of the country was occupied by the Soviet Union. Between 1939 and 1941 Schulz lived in the Soviet-occupied territory, but when Germany attacked the U.S.S.R., Drohobycz was occupied by the Nazis. A Gestapo officer, Felix Landau, liked Schulz's drawings, arranged him a pass out of the ghetto, and commissioned him to paint frescoes in his house. Landau killed a Jewish dentist who was protected by another Gestapo officer, Karl Günther. In the "Aryan" quarter Schulz was spotted by him, and shot in retaliation, on the street in November 19, 1942. The manuscript of his novel, entitled Messiah, is said to exist in the KGB archives relating to the Gestapo.

"On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passers-by, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey. Upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore that grimace of heat - as if the sun had forced his worshipers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, faces with thick gold paint; they smiled at each other's pagan faces - the barbaric smiles of Bacchus." (from 'August' in The Street of Crocodiles, 1934)

Schulz wrote in Polish although he knew both Yiddish and German. As a writer Schulz made his debut with Sklepy Cynamonowe (1934), a collection of short stories, which was published at the urging of the novelist Zofia Nalkowska. Its title can be translated as "Cinamon shops". The book was followed by Sanatorium pod Klepsydra (1937, The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass). With these two collections Schulz became one of the most original figures of polish avant-garde, joining the front rank of Stanislaw Witkiewicz and Witold Gombrowicz. In 1938 he was awarded the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature. Schulz's prose reflected the influence of Franz Kafka, but in spite of their threatening atmosphere, they had surrealistic humor and realistic details, which tied them to everyday family life. Kafka was a very close author to Schulz, but he also drew from Hasidic literature and folktales. According to some sources he did not translate Kafka's novel The Trial into Polish, but lent his name to a work made by his fiancee, Jósefina Szelinska.

After the war Schulz was "rediscovered" and a comprehensive collection of his stories, Proza, was published in 1964. It included also letters and literary reviews. Philip Roth included the published collections of fiction in his Writers from Other Europe Series. Schulz's erotically suggestive paintings and drawings have been compared to those of Utrillo, de Chirico, Henri Rousseau, and Chagall. A selection of his drawings was published in Druga jesien (1973).

Schulz's drawing and paintings were discovered in 2001 and shipped to Israel, to the Holocaust memorial. Schulz has also featured in novels by Philip Roth (The Prague Orgy, in which Schulz is never mentioned by name), Cynthia Ozick (placed in the center of The Messiah of Stockholm, dedicated to Roth), and David Grossman (See Under: Love, in which Schulz appears both as a fictional character and as himself).

From 1934, Schulz had worked on a novel entitled Messiah. In 1990, the Swedish ambassador to Poland heard from a Soviet civil servant that a packet of papers had been found, mis-shelved, in the KGB archives relating to the Gestapo. The top sheet announced the novel Messiah. (Stuart Kelly, in The Book of Lost Books, pp. 359-361)

In his short stories Schulz created a mythical childhood world which combined autobiographical elements with fantastic elements and occasionally masochist bursts. His central character is the Father, Jakub, whom the narrators describes through the eyes of Józef, his son. Other characters are Adela, the servant girl, and the narrator's mother. Schulz's stories leave much unsaid, he doesn't rely on conventional plot development, and often there is not much events. Life in Schulz's world follows its own logic and undergoes transmutations, and his characters live parallel realities. In Dr. Gothard's sanatorium the clock is put back to postpone the Father's death. At great cost he imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, and soon the house if full or exotic birds. He is a great believer in metamorphosis and his obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one. When a son is changed into a giant cockroach in one of Kafka's most famous stories, 'The Metamorphosis', Schulz turns the Father into a crab-like being, who climbs curtains, eats crumbs of bread and little pieces of meat from the floor, and sleeps under a table. Eventually Józef's mother cooks the creature for the dinner, but nobody wants touch the gray crab. The Father spends some days in his bowl and then disappears, l eaving behind one leg in the tomato sauce and jelly.

For further reading: 'Introduction 'by C. Wieniewska to The Street of Crocodiles (1963); Regiony wielkiej herezji by J. Ficowski (1967); The History of Polish Literature by C. Milosz (1969); Bankructwo realnosci by J. Speina (1974); Die Prosa von Bruno Schulz by E. Goslicki-Baur (1975); 'Introduction' by J. Ficowski to The Street of Crocodiles (1977); New York Review of Books, April 14 (1977); 'Introduction' by C. Wieniewska to Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (1978); New York Review of Books, July 20 (1978); Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, ed. by Jean-Albert Bédè and William B. Edgerton (1980); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20the Century, vol. 4, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Bruno Schulz: New Documents and Interpretations by Czeslaw Z. Prokopczyk ( 1999); Regions of the Great Heresy: The Life and Work of Bruno Schulz by Jerzy Ficowski (2001)

Selected works:

• Sklepy Cynamonowe, 1934
  - Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories (translated by Celina Wieniawska, 1963; U.S. title: The Street of Crocodiles, 1963)
  - Krokotiilikuja (suom. Aarno Peromies, 1965; valikoima teoksista Sklepy Cynamonowe; Sanatorium pod Klepsydra; Kometa)
• Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą, 1937
  - The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (translated by Celina Wieniawska, 1978)
• Proza, 1964 (ed. Artur Sandauer and Jerzy Ficowski, rev. ed. 1973)
• Druga jesień, 1973
• Ksiega listów, 1975 (ed. Jerzy Ficowski)
• Xięga bałwochwalcza, 1988 (ed. Jerzy Ficowski)
  - The Booke of Idolatry (translated by Bogna Piotrowska, 1988)
• Letters and Drawings of Bruno Sculz, 1988 (ed. Jerzy Ficowski, ed. Jerzy Ficowski; tr. Walter Arndt and Victoria Nelson)
• Opowiadania, wybór esejów i listów, 1989 (ed. Jerzy Jarzebski)
• The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz, 1989 (translated by Celina Wieniawska)
• The Drawings of Bruno Schulz, 1990 (edited by Jerzy Ficowski)
• The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, 1998 (ed. Jerzy Ficowski)