Ivan Klima’s Premier a Andel (The Prime Minister and the Angel) – a note at the end of the book tells us – was written between April 2002 and January 2003 but Klima writes with such ease that it gives the impression of having been written yesterday between a late breakfast and lunch with a […]

Anhelli by Juliusz S?owacki tells of a mystic journey undertaken by the eponymous hero and his guide, a shaman, around Siberia, to which many Poles were deported after their failed revolt in 1830. It’s an unintentionally hilarious classic of nineteenth century Polish romantic literature. At one point Anhelli and the shaman meet people carrying coffins […]

A short passage from Marcin Swietlicki’s new novel, Dwanascie (Twelve), should give pause to all internet posters except me. A brash Varsovian kicked out of a Krakow pub thinks on his way out that he’ll destroy the business by writing about it in his blog. The blog entry he thinks up: avoid the “Office” on […]

He was a typical Pole, who said “no” to everything Slawomir Mrozek describes his father in the autobiographical Baltazar.

This month’s issue of Lampa (Lamp) has a few features on Stanisław Lem, who passed away recently. Radek Knapp writes in one of them “One day I told the Master that I had written a story, to which Lem replied: ‘don’t write. You’ll starve to death’.” It’s a tough old profession alright but not for […]

The Poles seemed to lose interest in novels very quickly. Hardly had they managed to produce a handful of decent ones than Witold Gombrowicz set to work writing “anti-novels.” His contemporary, Witkacy, refused even to accord novels the status of “art.” Polish writers are still experimenting with a form barely mastered. Take Sławomir Shuty’s Zwał: […]