Henryk Sienkiewicz (5 May 1846 – 15 November 1916) was a Polish journalist and novelist best-known for his historical fiction works With Fire and Sword (1884), The Deluge (1886), and Fire in the Steppe (1888), as well as the 1896 Christian best-seller Quo Vadis.
Biography[]
Henryk Sienkiewicz was born in Wola Okrzejska, Congress Poland, Russian Empire on 5 May 1846 to an impoverished noble family of Poles of Tatar descent. Sienkiewicz became a journalist and author during the 1860s, and he travelled to the United States during the 1870s and wrote popular travel essays. During the 1880s, he wrote several historical fiction novels (set during the Khmelnytsky Uprising and The Deluge) that further increased his popularity, and he published his best-selling Christian novel Quo Vadis in 1896; for this and other novels, he was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Sienkiewicz attempted to use his writings to influence world opinion in favor of the Polish nationalist cause, and he had ties to right-wing National Democracy politicians and was critical of the Polish Socialist Party. However, the moderate Sienkiewicz declined to become a deputy to the Russian State Duma. He died of heart disease in 1916 in Vevey, Switzerland, and his remains were repatriated to Warsaw in 1924.