Henryk Grynberg is a Polish Jewish novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet who has lived in the United States since 1967. Considered to be one of the most important contemporary émigré authors writing in Polish, Grynberg published a collection of short stories, a volume of poetry, and a novel before leaving Poland. Afterward he continued to publish poetry and prose abroad, mostly on the Holocaust and post-Holocaust experience of the Polish Jews. Because of communist censorship, his works were absent from the official Polish book market for nearly twenty years, but were translated into English, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Czech, Hungarian, and Dutch; since 1987 they have again appeared in Poland.

Born in Warsaw on 4 July 1936 to Abram and Sura (née Stolik) Grynberg and raised in Radoszyna, near Misk Mazowiecki, Yeshayahu Hersh Grynberg survived the years 1942 through 1944 in hiding, in Warsaw and in the Podlasie region under...