塔伏乌什·孔维茨基

Konwicki was born in 1926 in Nowa Wilejka near Vilnius, where he spent his early childhood. He spent his adolescence in Vilnius, attending a local gymnasium. Immediately following the outbreak of World War II, Vilnius was occupied by the Soviet Union and subsequently by Nazi Germany, and all education for Poles was discontinued. Konwicki continued his studies underground. In 1944, he joined the ranks of a local Home Army partisan unit, taking part in Operation Tempest and Operation Ostra Brama. After the war Vilnius was annexed by the Soviet Union and Konwicki was expatriated.
In the spring of 1945 Konwicki moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at Jagiellonian University. He also started to work as a journalist at Odrodzenie weekly, moving to Warsaw in 1947 to continue his work for the magazine. In the capital, he was one of the leading advocates for Socialist Realism in literature. In 1948 he finished his memoirs of his partisan years (Rojsty), but the book was not published until 1956. His literary debut was the production novel Construction Site (1950, Przy Budowie), which was followed by the novel Power (1954, Władza). His 1956 novel From a Besieged City (1956, Z oblężonego miasta) also became quite popular.