Literature

Writers write and readers read

The greatest change and hardest challenge facing Polish literature, like the literature of other small and mid-sized countries and languages, arises from the need to merge with global culture’s circulatory system (which de facto means English-speaking culture) while at the same time defending its distinctness and local flavour.

Fiction by the next generation of Poles must not become just an offshoot of English-language literature or global literature – or even Polish literature.

Polish literature in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century is coping well with the realities of the free market for cultural goods.

Authors have learned how to draw on the language and traditions of literary convention.

Critics have slowly began to forgive authors for their imagination.

Publishers have understood that today, books must fight for readers’ attention with movies, social media, and TV shows – especially TV shows.

Through it all, readers still read •

Lexicon of Polish literary phenomena, abridged edition

Instructions for use:

Read the entries in any order you wish. Try out selected trains of thought on your own brain.

K for kids

Raising children to be dedicated consumers of literature! The responsible task of sharing the magic of reading with youngsters is in talented hands. Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński have conquered the world with their books Maps and What Will Become of You? The publishing house Dwie Siostry is leading the way in promoting valuable and unique children’s literature, with a stable of talented authors and illustrators of the younger generation, such as Grzegorz Kasdepke, Agata Królak and Agata Dudek (AbOVE). There’s also strong demand for reprints of publishing classics, such as the innovative works of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson •

Writers have no easy task: they must capture and hold the attention of audiences bombarded with the easy culture of TV shows and the Internet. So writers have become brands, carefully projecting a consistent image and staying message. Michał Witkowski, author of the controversial queer novel Lubiewo, electrifies both gossip websites and literary theoreticians with his provocative incarnation of literature bordering on performance art. Jacek Dehnel (LEFT) charms readers with an aura of a gentleman writer, his prose erudite, slightly nostalgic and encrusted with allusions to classical literature. A different strategy was adopted by Szczepan Twardoch, author of the bestseller Morphine, a specialist in Silesian climes and masculine elegance of the tough-guy James-Bond variety. The literary middle ground is occupied by crime fiction, produced by writers associated with the higher registers as well as by crime-novel specialist (such as Marek Krajewski, Katarzyna Bonda and Zygmunt Miłoszewski). Every now and then literary critics renew the debate whether it’s better to promote popular literature to entice the resistant masses, or abandon them to the mercy of other media and reinforce the battlements of High Art. There’s no answer yet •

F for festivals

What’s the most effective way to reach readers? No one really knows, but you have to try, with nudging, nagging and promotion. The Warsaw Book Fair held at the National Stadium targets a broad audience, while the Conrad Festival in Cracow features a literature prize for debuting writers. Initiatives by enthusiasts offer an alternative to mass events, supported by crowdfunding and aimed at getting readers strongly engaged in literary narratives interwoven with the urban fabric. Warsaw Reads is a series of events focused around a single book selected in a straw poll. ‘Czytaj!’ the Częstochowa Festival for Deconstruction of the Word, relies on transmedia literary practices. For example, have you ever tried to sew a poem with a needle and thread? •

C for comics

Fondly known as the bastard child of culture. This medium, long associated only with didactic series about brave police officers or American heroes in tights, is now effectively deployed as a fresh and deft tool for depicting reality. Fugazi, Marcin Podolec’s take on the 1990s music scene, has been picked up by one foreign publisher after another (France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Germany), while Maciej Sieńczyk’s nested story-within-a-story Adventures on a Desert Island has been published in the UK and Italy. Take note of the postmodern comics of the Maszin group, inspired by the Polish school of graphics and poster art • AbOVE: picture from Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz/Dennis Wojda Mikropolis comic book •

Sorry for those who love the scent of old paper. In recent years libraries have been dusted off, updated and computerized. They now run discussion clubs, readings by authors, and workshops. They can be a showcase for the whole city. The University of Warsaw Library is an architectural icon, and visitors flock to its rooftop garden. In Opole, the municipal library looks like it’s drifting down the river •

P for poets

Cracow is regarded as the stronghold of poets, as it is closely tied to the 1920s avantgarde and Nobel Prize winners Vistulawa Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz (AbOVE). The modern wave is represented by lyrical experts associated with Korporacja Ha!art circles and ‘cyberbum’ poetry – tough, obnoxious, and circulated under a creative commons licence •

R for reportage

Poles love reportage and read it avidly. Ryszard Kapuściński is still the king of the genre, followed among others by Wojciech Jagielski, a specialist in Africa and the Middle East, and Mariusz Szczygieł, who examines his beloved Prague with an exceptionally sympathetic sense of humour. Excellent new writers in this field continue to emerge. A star of the younger generation is Filip Springer, adroitly diagnosing the maladies afflicting new 30-something urbanites. Truth is stranger than fiction, so booksellers offer more and more titles of ‘literature of fact’ on every topic you might want to know aboutor more often what you’d rather forget •

Champions of the (Literary) Force

Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962)

An author who's pulled off an impossible trick for years: she is praised by critics and adored by a mass readership. Every book by Tokarczuk is an event debated about in both specialists and social media. Her novels are crammed with myths, factoids, legends and slices of everyday life. In her books you’ll find the story of a bearded female saint, a cake recipe using poisonous, psychedelic fly agaric mushrooms, and the trick for avoiding evil according to the Beguny sect of Old Believers: always keep moving.

SPECIAL POWER: The finest dreadlocks in Polish highbrow literature • Dorota Masłowska (born 1983)

Debuted in 2002 with White and Red, a virtuoso composition with borrowings from street language, pop culture, and the trash heap of everyday media fodder. Masłowska (AbOVE) captures spot-on the climate of Poland in constant turmoil, aiming high but sinking into a swamp of complexes and illusions. She’s recently been doing the same as a songwriter (under the pseudonym Mister D.).

SPECIAL POWER: Girlish charm. Masłowska ventured onto the literary scene over a decade ago but remains a volatile enfant terrible • Andrzej Stasiuk (born 1960)

Writes novels, stories and essays, and with Monika Sznajderman co-owns the Czarne publishing house, specializing in promotion of literature from Central & Eastern Europe as well as reportage. Stasiuk’s works can be shuffled to suit a range of readers, from tales of sexual escapades to meditative travel essays from the trackless wilds of the ‘worse Europe’. Unexpectedly, Stasiuk’s oeuvre also includes a volume of love poems.

SPECIAL POWER: Distance. The writer lives in the village of Wołowiec in the Low Beskid mountains and rarely leaves his hideaway; you won’t catch him riding the media bandwagon • Jacek Dukaj (born 1974)

Dispels the myth that at a certain age you can’t admit ‘My favourite literary genre is fantasy’. A short story of his, The Cathedral, was made into an animated short film by Tomasz Bagiński which was nominated for an Oscar. Dukaj’s most famous work is the monumental novel Ice, where in an alternative world at the threshold of the 20th century Europe freezes over and Russia becomes a scientific and industrial power.

SPECIAL POWER: Diversification. Ice is literally weighty, at 1,054 pages in hardback, but Dukaj also wrote the ephemeral hypertext work The Old Axolotl, available exclusively as an ebook •