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Władysław Stanisław Reymont (1867 - 1925) was an early 20th-century Polish novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1924 for his novel 'Chłopi' (1900-1909; English translation, 'The Peasants,' by M. H. Dziewiecki, 1925-26). This is a four-part epic story set in a Polish village, with each part named after a consecutive season of the year. The chief characters are the father and adult son of a rich peasant family, and the plot centres round their rivalry with each other for power and influence in the village community, and the incestuous love between the son and the father's third wife. The background to this tale is made up of a rich description of country life, especially the various community customs and rituals in the Polish village of Lipce, presented in a sequence that follows the calendar of Nature. Reymont applied a language stylised to read like dialect, which proved extremely difficult to translate.
In another of his novels Reymont addressed the subject of urban life in a growing industrial city. In 'Ziemia obiecana' (1899, translated into English by M.H. Dziewiecki as 'The Promised Land', 1928), the scene is set in the cotton- and textile-manufacturing city of Łódź in the late 19th century. The characters depicted present a cross-section of the multi-ethnic and multicultural society in this rapidly expanding metropolis during the Polish Industrial Revolution.
Both of Reymont's two principal novels have had feature films based on them: 'Chłopi' in 1973 by Jan Rybkowski, and 'Ziemia obiecana' by Andrzej Wajda in 1974 (as 'Land of Promise', nominated for an Oscar in 1975), and in a second director's cut version in 2000 by Andrzej Wajda.
A third novel by Reymont available in English translation is 'Komediantka' (1896, translated by E. Obecny as 'The Comedienne', 1920), and it tells the story of a company of itinerant actors.
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