CONTROLLED CONVERSATIONS | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

In 1982 Soviet-controlled Poland—a time and place of suspicion and mistrust—when geopolitical forces and violent men descend upon her little town of Zygmuntowo, Emilia must decide if she’s willing to risk Pr*son or worse for self-respect and for her unexpected lover. 

Ordered to monitor the calls she connects, Emilia, a telephone switchboard operator, overhears a mysterious coded conversation. It continues to distract her, but not as much as the growing realization that she’s falling in unsanctioned love with her best friend Kalina. Meanwhile, outside the city of Frombork, Antek, a shipyard engineer and a Solidarity labor union treasurer, escapes from Pr*son and works to recover the union’s money, a task which in time leads him to Emilia’s town. In the metropolitan city of Gdańsk, Roman, a secret police major, wants the money for himself and dreams of his own escape and the magical beaches of Rio de Janeiro. 

The only daughter of a local Communist Party apparatchik, Emilia has enjoyed a sheltered life, but with the advent of martial law, her mother’s influence can no longer shield her. She faces choices she never expected to make when she discovers her best friend’s and lover’s involvement with the resistance. With new allies and enemies in town, the time to choose a side is now.

In his debut novel, Karol Lagodzki asks: What separates people who transcend their fear and take risks for the sake of change from the rest of us? The answer is up to the readers.

Karol Lagodzki is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside former US Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein to share more about the themes of justice and humanity presented in the book, and dive deeper into the recent attacks on morality and democracy in Poland and around the world. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Lagodzki will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of CONTROLLED CONVERSATIONS will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books

Karol Lagodzki, a native of Poland, is an exophonic, English-language author of fiction. His stories have appeared in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, NUNUM, Streetlight Magazine, and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine’s Ruritania Prize for Short Fiction. Controlled Conversations is his debut novel.

He holds an MFA in creative writing, buys more books than he can read or afford—usually novels and short story collections, though he’s been known to pick up an odd book of poetry or accessible science—and gives back to the literary community by serving as a reader for several journals. Karol’s non-writing careers have ranged from fixing stucco while dangling from roofs in Paris to sorting through human cadaver heads in Florida to developing and marketing medical devices for critically ill people in the American Midwest, but his true ambition is to remain a student for as long as he possibly can and make sure more stories make it out onto the page.

Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful, unconventional family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog. Find him at klagodzki.com.

Lee Feinstein is an American policy scholar and former diplomat and senior official at the US Departments of State and Defense. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland during the administration of President Obama. He was the inaugural dean at Indiana University’s Lee H. Hamilton and Richard G. Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is author with Tod Lindberg of Means to an End: US Interest and the International Criminal Court (Brookings, 2009).

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets