Polianych B.Arrow in the Night: A Sensational Tale.Philadelphia, 1974

B. Polianyts [Hryhor Luzhnytsky]. Shot in the Night: a sensational novel / dust jacket by Vasyl Doroshenko.

Philadelphia, PA: Konotop Publishing House, 1974. — Third edition. — 107 pp. — Parallel English title: Shot in the Night: a novel. Printed by the Syretskyi Home Press, Philadelphia.

In an illustrated softcover with flaps, featuring a design by Vasyl Doroshenko: against a black background stylized as a linocut, a white outline depicts a city with a tower and church domes engulfed in flames, and a man in a cap and cloak; the author's name and title are in red. The cover is worn along the edges and creases, with a light scuff mark at the top left. The back cover shows yellowing, brown spots, and rubbing, with a vertical crease. The text block is clean and tight, with cream-colored paper slightly darkened along the edges. The price "1500 грн" is handwritten on the back cover. Condition: good.

Lifetime edition. The book has historical and cultural value: it is a printing of the novel that Polish authorities banned in Lviv in 1934, and Vasyl Doroshenko's design is of separate artistic interest.

INFORMATION

The novel about life in the Ukrainian underground under Polish rule was written in 1933 and was scheduled for publication in Lviv in 1934 as part of the Ukrainian Library series by Ivan Tychter's Ukrainian Press Publishing House; a print run of 3,000 copies was planned. As the publishers explain in "Instead of a Foreword," three days after the copies had been sent to the censors, the police arrived at the printing house with an order to ban the printing, confiscate the printed sheets, and melt down the type for lead. Several copies were secretly printed, but they were lost in the wartime turmoil, and the author saved neither any of them nor the manuscript.

B. Polianyts is the pseudonym of Hryhor Luzhnytsky (1903–1990), a writer, theater scholar, literary critic, and journalist, born in Lviv and died in Philadelphia. He studied in Graz, earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1926, was a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1952, and served as literary editor of the Ukrainian Press Publishing House until 1939. In the genre of the sensational novel, he also wrote "The First Night" (1928), "The Watch with Cracked Glass" (1933), "Halyo!.. Halyo!.. The Bank Robbery!" (1935), and the trilogy "The Crimson Cross".

The 1974 Konotop edition is marked as the third edition; it opens with "Instead of a Foreword: On the Genesis of the Work 'Shot in the Night' and Its Publication," while the English summary on the back cover introduces the author to Western readers. The dust jacket was designed by Vasyl Doroshenko (b. 1925), a graphic artist, painter, and printer who became a U.S. resident in 1949 and worked at the Amerika Publishing House in Philadelphia and taught at the Ukrainian Art Studio.