Bolesław Prus wrote "Pharaoh," a novel about ancient Egypt that is really about the eternal contest between power and the people, between the state and religion. Poles read it as a meditation on their own partitioned homeland.
His real name was Aleksander Głowacki. Born in 1847 in Hrubieszów, Poland, he fought in the January Uprising of 1863, was wounded, and was taken prisoner. After that came journalism — feuilletons, novellas.
"The Doll" (1890) is his great realist novel: the story of a Warsaw merchant who loves an aristocratic woman and loses everything — a portrait of nineteenth-century Polish society, where the barriers of class break people.
"Pharaoh" (1895–96) is a historical novel about the young pharaoh Ramses XIII, who tries to reform Egypt and runs up against the might of the priestly caste. Prus died in Warsaw in 1912. Streets and squares all over Poland bear his name.