# The Elephant

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![The Elephant](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/slawomir-mrozek/the-elephant_978-01-4119-304-5.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2013%3A05%3A15)

- Book: [The Elephant](https://www.bookquiver.com/slawomir-mrozek/the-elephant) ([The Elephant.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/slawomir-mrozek/the-elephant.md))
- Authors: [Slawomir Mrozek](https://www.bookquiver.com/slawomir-mrozek)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4119-304-5
- Pages: 176
- Published: 2010-05-06
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

The Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek's award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.