Thursday, June 22, 2006

Starting the Deluge


Picture is the Swedish King Karl X. For anyone interested in the Deluge period in Poland, my recommended starting point is the fictional works of the great Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz (better known in the West for Quo Vadis). The 3 books (but 4 volumes in English) are a fantastic read and their 3600 pages will keep you engrossed from start to finish, I have read them twice in the last year (girlfriend thinks I am slighty warped but I am a wargamer so what does she expect). The trilogy consists of; 'With Fire and Sword', 'The Deluge', and 'Fire in the Steppe'. If you just want an introduction to the story (80 pages) try 'The Trilogy Companion ISBN 0870522213', I got mine on Amazon for about 15 USD. For those whom visual inspiration is all important, all 3 books have been made into movies by the great Polish director Jerzy Hoffman. The movies are; 'With Fire and Sword 1999, 205 minutes', 'The Deluge, 1974, 280 minutes', and the last movie is called 'Colonel Woloyjwski 1969, 147 minutes' and is a rendition of the novel 'Fire in the Steppe', for those who like Poles versus the Ottomans this is the movie for you. All movies I got from Amazon and are Polish with English subtitles, unfortunatally they require a multi-regional DVD player to watch, if you are in Australia or UK. If you don't have one buy a cheap Chinese or Tawainese player for 60 dollars in Australia (they all seem to be multi-regional). If anyone is interested I will post website links and books that I found most useful but there is not that much in English, if you can read Swdish then there is a plethora of works to consult on all aspects of Karl X.

1 comment:

Scott Robertson said...

The books are stand alone but reading them in order will give you more background on the specific characters. The Deluge is a great read and probably my favorite, watch the movie and you will want to start painting Swedes and Poles. Cheers Scott