Marek Hłasko

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**Marek Hłasko**

Born:	January 14, 1934 Warsaw
Died:	June 14, 1969 Wiesbaden
Occupation:	Writer

Marek Hłasko (14 January 1934, Warsaw – 14 June 1969 Wiesbaden) was a Polish writer. By the age of 22, Hlasko was already famous as an author, at 24 a celebrated exile writer and by the age of 35 already dead. Hlasko led a life coined/shaped by alcohol excesses and numerous affairs - besides he wrote some remarkable novels.

Hłasko's parents, Maciej and Maria Hlasko, divorced when he was three. His father died when he was five. After the war the family moved to Wrocław.

Hlasko burst on the scene in 1954 at age 20 and, through a stream of miraculous short stories and reviews of both books and films, soon came to dominate Polish literary life. Not only did he look like the newly created film star James Dean in the most prevalent photo we have of him, but he also, like Dean's character, was a born rebel.

In 1958 Hlasko received a visa to visit the West. Polish censors having refused publication to his latest novels, "The Graveyard" and "Next Stop -- Paradise," he had passed them on to the Polish emigre journal Kultura. Now under fire from the Polish press, he decided to remain in the West. He never returned to Poland.

For years he wandered, from France to Italy and Switzerland, then back to West Germany. For a time he was married to German actress Sonja Ziemann, who had starred in the film made from "The Eighth Day of the Week," and lived with her in West Germany. When they separated, in 1966, he spent three years in the United States. He hoped for a co-operation with the film director Roman Polanski, who wanted him to be a film script author. However nothing became of it.

Hlasko remained nevertheless and completed a flight course. He worked illegally as he had years before in Israel. (A novel based upon his experiences in America was published posthumously; like so much else, including his autobiography, it remains untranslated.) In 1969 Hlasko made plans to move back to Israel, but committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, combined with alcohol, in a hotel room in Wiesbaden, West Germany.