Ascension

Adolf Rudnicki (originally Aron Hirszhorn) was born in Zabno, Poland, to a Hasidic family. He moved to Warsaw in the early 1930s to pursue a literary career, initially writing for Kurier Poranny. His first novels, Szczury (Rats; 1932) and Niekochana (Unloved; 1937), established him as a writer. But when he returned to Warsaw after escaping German captivity, living under false papers, and fighting in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, he found his wartime writings reduced to a pile of ashes; it became for him a sign to adopt a new mode of writing, akin to psychological journalism. From 1972 to 1977 he lived in self-imposed exile in Paris.