The Deluge

New York: Copernicus Society of America, 1991. First English edition thus. Publisher's full red cloth stamped in gilt with dust jacket. Octavo. Vol. 1: xxi, 842; Vol. 2: 919. Well-read, cover spines are lightly pushed inwards, and minor edge-wear to dust jackets. Overall a very-good example of this two-volume set.

Originally written in 1886 in Polish, this monumental work chronicles the the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and more specifically the devastating Swedish invasion and Northern Wars that nearly destroyed the Polish state. It is regarded as a masterpiece of Polish national prose. In 1905, Sienkiewicz earned himself the Nobel Prize for Literature for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer." Thus becoming the first Polish literary Nobel laureate in history.

This version is translated by W. S. Kuniczak, and is widely celebrated as the definitive modern translation of the book, having adapted the text so that it reads like a robust, modern epic while maintaining the 17th-century atmosphere. And rescuing it from being lost to the Western World.