Polish Joke

so he decides to make his own roots, reinventing himself first as a sort of non-ethnic everyman, then as an "Irishman"

Jasiu's adventures-alternately zany and heartbreaking-take him through a job interview with an Ur-Wasp; to an attempt to become a Catholic priest

On to a flower shop where he can't get service because he is weirdly invisible; to a doomed love affair with a Jewish woman

And to a wacky Irish travel agency where he has to prove that he is Irish before he can buy a ticket; and to a doctor more interested in ethnic pain than in healing

Jasiu is also bedeviled by a reappearing Polish relative and has to face off with the ghost of a dead Polish patriot. In the end, by trying to get away from his ethnic background, Jasiu finds out who he is and what it means to be "a Pole"

" furiously funny [and] endearingly foolish" - NY Magazine