A True One-Off: Bruno Schulz

On this day in 1942, Bruno Schulz was shot dead in the street by a Gestapo officer, having slipped out of the ghetto in Drohobysz, the small town in Galicia where he had lived all his life. Schulz, who had been given a pass by another Gestapo officer, had been buying a loaf of bread when he was spotted by a rival of his protector and gunned down. So died a true literary one-off, leaving behind him two collections of short fictions which are quite unlike anything else in literature - closest perhaps to Kafka (though Schulz apparently hadn't read Kafka when he published his first collection) and, visually, suggesting early Chagall. His subject matter was nothing but his home town and his family - but what he did with that material was something else altogether... If you haven't come across him, I'd suggest trying the very short stories August and Mr Charles, and the longer fiction The Comet, in Cinnamon Shops here. As for biography - a Wiki life will give you all the facts...