KUNCEWICZ(OWA), MARIA

born Oct. 30 [Nov. 11, New Style], 1899, Samara, Russia died July 15, 1989, Kazimierz Dolny, Pol. ne Szczepanska Polish writer of novels, essays, plays, and short stories. A daughter of Polish parents who had been exiled to Russia after the Polish insurrection of January 1863, she was two years old when her family returned to Warsaw. She studied at the universities of Krakw, Warsaw, and Nancy. Her first novel, Twarz mezczyzny (1928; The Face of the Male), established her gift as a writer who excelled in penetrating psychological portraits, using subtle irony and poetical lyricism. Her Cudzoziemka (1936; The Stranger) is a masterpiece for which she was awarded the 1937 Warsaw Literary Prize. Episodes from her novel Dni powszednie panstwa Kowalskich (1937; The Daily Life of the Kowalskis) were broadcast by radio in Poland before World War II. In 1939 she escaped from Warsaw to Paris, and in 1940 she went to England, where she wrote Klucze (1943; The Keys), a literary diary subtitled in the English version as A Journey Through Europe at War. In 1956 she moved to the United States, where she published an anthology of stories and essays entitled The Modern Polish Mind (1962) and taught Polish language and literature at the University of Chicago (196164). She continued to write novels, including Gaj oliwny (1961; The Olive Grove) and Don Kichot i nianki (1965; Don Quixote and the Nannies).