Frankfurt Frankfurt 2011 - Znak Rights
Frankfurt Frankfurt 2011 - Znak Rights
Frankfurt Frankfurt 2011 - Znak Rights
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<strong>Frankfurt</strong> <strong>2011</strong>
RIGHTS DEPARTMENT:<br />
www.znak-rights.com<br />
RIGHTS DIRECTOR:<br />
Anna Rucińska<br />
rucinska@znak.com.pl<br />
Direct tel.:<br />
(+48) 12 61 99 506 About<br />
2<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
A GOOD IDEA<br />
<strong>Znak</strong> was founded<br />
in 1959 in answer to<br />
a call from the weekly<br />
newspaper Tygodnik<br />
Powszechny to preserve<br />
in book form the work<br />
of those writing for it<br />
and for the monthly<br />
<strong>Znak</strong>. Some 900 people<br />
responded to the appeal,<br />
and although they could<br />
not be sure they were<br />
supporting an initiative<br />
that would last, they<br />
thought it a good idea.<br />
us<br />
Despite all sorts of<br />
obstacles, including<br />
censorship, political<br />
upheavals and the tough<br />
demands of capitalism,<br />
<strong>Znak</strong> is doing well on the<br />
publishing market and is<br />
achieving success. More<br />
than just a publishing<br />
house, it also provides<br />
a forum for important<br />
debate, and thus it makes<br />
a major contribution to<br />
Polish culture. In our<br />
publishing work we meet<br />
a wide range of needs,<br />
producing publications<br />
that interpret the world,<br />
mankind, history and<br />
the modern era, through<br />
to top-quality fi ction<br />
and non-fi ction, as well<br />
as light reading and<br />
books for the youngest<br />
generation. After all,<br />
<strong>Znak</strong> is a young company,<br />
one year younger than<br />
Paddington Bear, and<br />
the same age as Le Petit<br />
Nicolas.
Contents<br />
9 Marek Krajewski<br />
The Erinyes<br />
10 Marek Krajewski<br />
Charon’s Numbers<br />
11 Kazimierz Kutz<br />
The Fifth Part of the World<br />
12 Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
The Horizon<br />
13 Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
A Treatise on Bean-Shelling<br />
13 Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
Stone upon Stone<br />
14 Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
15 Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
Bornholm, Bornholm<br />
16 Paweł Huelle<br />
17 Paweł Huelle<br />
Who Was David Weiser?<br />
17 Paweł Huelle<br />
Cold Sea Tales<br />
18 Paweł Huelle<br />
The Last Supper<br />
18 Paweł Huelle<br />
Stories for a Time of Relocation<br />
19 Paweł Huelle<br />
Mercedes-Benz<br />
19 Paweł Huelle<br />
Castorp<br />
21 Antoni Libera<br />
Madame<br />
21 Antoni Libera<br />
Godot and His Shadow<br />
22 Maria Nurowska<br />
23 Maria Nurowska<br />
Your Name<br />
23 Maria Nurowska<br />
Return to Lvov<br />
24 Maria Nurowska<br />
Maidens and Widows, vol.1-3<br />
24 Maria Nurowska<br />
The Lover<br />
25 Maria Nurowska<br />
Russian Lover<br />
25 Maria Nurowska<br />
German Dance<br />
26 Maria Nurowska<br />
Two Loves<br />
26 Maria Nurowska<br />
To Feed the Wolves<br />
27 Maria Nurowska<br />
46 Aleksandra Mizielińska,<br />
Requiem for a Wolf<br />
Daniel Mizieliński<br />
27 Maria Nurowska<br />
Who Eats Whom<br />
The Moon over Zakopane<br />
47 Andrzej Maleszka<br />
28 Maria Nurowska<br />
Magic Tree. Tale 1. The Red Chair<br />
Love Letters<br />
48 Andrzej Maleszka<br />
28 Maria Nurowska<br />
Magic Tree. Tale 2. The Mystery<br />
Tango for Three<br />
of a Bridge<br />
29 Maria Nurowska<br />
49 Michał Rusinek<br />
The Case of Nina S.<br />
Little Chopin<br />
29 Maria Nurowska<br />
50 Joanna Olech<br />
Spanish Eyes<br />
Pompom’s Children<br />
30 Maria Nurowska<br />
51 Joanna Olech<br />
Anna’s Choice<br />
Pompom the Sink Dragon<br />
30 Maria Nurowska<br />
52 Marcin Brykczyński<br />
My Friend the Traitor<br />
Marta Ignerska<br />
32 Andrzej Franaszek<br />
52 Joanna Olech<br />
Miłosz. A Biography<br />
The Pink Piglet<br />
33 Travels with Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
Thirteen Translators Tell Their Stories<br />
33 Travels with Ryszard Kapuściński,<br />
part 2.<br />
The Tales of Fourteen Translators<br />
34 Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
A Reporter: Self-portrait<br />
3<br />
34 Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
The Rapid Current of History.<br />
Writings on the 20th and 21st Centuries<br />
35 Beata Nowacka,<br />
Zygmunt Ziątek<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński. A Writer’s Biography<br />
36 Andrzej Szczeklik<br />
Catharsis<br />
37 Andrzej Szczeklik<br />
Kore<br />
38 Małgorzata Szejnert<br />
The Black Garden<br />
39 Małgorzata Szejnert<br />
Gateway Island<br />
40 Karolina Lanckorońska<br />
41 Karolina Lanckorońska<br />
Those Who Trespass Against Us<br />
42 Patrycja Bukalska<br />
and Stanisław Aronson<br />
Years of Turmoil<br />
43 Fr. Michał Heller<br />
The Philosophy of Nature: A Historical Sketch<br />
45 Przemysław Wechterowicz,<br />
Marta Ignerska<br />
Great Dreams<br />
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4<br />
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Featured titles<br />
FICTION<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
Marek Krajewski<br />
Charon’s numbers<br />
Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
Bornholm, Bornholm<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
To Feed the Wolves<br />
Andrzej Franaszek<br />
Miłosz. A Biography<br />
Aleksandra Mizielińska<br />
Daniel Mizieliński<br />
Who Eats Whom<br />
5<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
p// g
Authors list<br />
FICTION<br />
Margaret Atwood<br />
John Banville<br />
Heinrich Böll<br />
Candace Bushnell<br />
Albert Camus<br />
Angela Carter<br />
J.M. Coetzee<br />
Joseph Conrad<br />
Junot Díaz<br />
Fyodor Dostoyevsky<br />
Karin Fossum<br />
Bohumil Hrabal<br />
Paweł Huelle<br />
Ismail Kadare<br />
Marek Krajewski<br />
Kazimierz Kutz<br />
James Joyce<br />
Jhumpa Lahiri<br />
Antoni Libera<br />
Ian McEwan<br />
Mario Vargas Llosa<br />
Richard Lourie<br />
Yann Martel<br />
Eduardo Mendoza<br />
Zbigniew Mentzel<br />
Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
Joyce Carol Oates<br />
Victor Pelevin<br />
Ernesto Sabato<br />
Lydie Salvayre<br />
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt<br />
Zadie Smith<br />
Koji Suzuki<br />
Tatyana Tolstaya<br />
Dubravka Ugresič<br />
Jeanette Winterson<br />
Virginia Woolf<br />
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POETRY Ryszard Kapuściński THEOLOGY<br />
Joseph Brodsky<br />
Robert Hass<br />
Seamus Heaney<br />
Edward Hirsch<br />
Jane Hirshfi eld<br />
Yusef Komunyakaa<br />
Denise Levertov<br />
Czesław Miłosz<br />
Anna Piwkowska<br />
Jacek Podsiadło<br />
Tomasz Różycki<br />
Wisława Szymborska<br />
Karol Wojtyła<br />
Ko Un<br />
Adam Zagajewski<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
Chris Anderson<br />
Timothy Garton Ash<br />
Stanisław Barańczak<br />
Władysław Bartoszewski<br />
Neal Bascomb<br />
Antony Beevor<br />
Samuel Beckett<br />
Joseph Brodsky<br />
Józef Czapski<br />
Norman Davies<br />
Umberto Eco<br />
Anne Fadiman<br />
Anne Frank<br />
Francis Fukuyama<br />
Atul Gawande<br />
Jan Garavaglia<br />
Malcolm Gladwell<br />
Jan T. Gross<br />
Richard Hammond<br />
Ian Kershaw<br />
Martin Lindstrom<br />
Anna Politkovskaya<br />
Mary Roach<br />
Robert Service<br />
E. Benjamin Skinner<br />
Timothy Snyder<br />
Andrzej Szczeklik<br />
Małgorzata Szejnert<br />
Jürgen Thorwald<br />
Andrzej Wajda<br />
PHILOSOPHY<br />
Saint Thomas Aquinas<br />
Saint Augustine<br />
Henri Bergson<br />
Martin Buber<br />
Etienne Gilson<br />
Georg W. F. Hegel<br />
Martin Heidegger<br />
Michał Heller<br />
Karl Jaspers<br />
Immanuel Kant<br />
Leszek Kołakowski<br />
Emmanuel Lévinas<br />
Krzysztof Michalski<br />
Karl Popper<br />
Franz Rosenzweig<br />
Barbara Skarga<br />
Richard Swinburne<br />
Xavier Tilliette<br />
Józef Tischner<br />
Claude Tresmontant<br />
Bernhard Welte<br />
Yves Congar<br />
Louis Dupré<br />
Paul Evdokimov<br />
Romano Guardini<br />
René Laurentin<br />
Henri de Lubac<br />
Richard Niebuhr<br />
Pope Benedict XVI<br />
Pope John Paul II<br />
Joseph Ratzinger<br />
Max Thurian<br />
CHILDREN’S BOOKS<br />
J.M. Barrie<br />
Michael Bond<br />
F.C. Boyce<br />
Christianna Brand<br />
Michael Ende<br />
Ted Hughes<br />
John Green<br />
Anthony Horowitz<br />
Janosch<br />
Barry Jonsberg<br />
Paul McCartney<br />
Geraldine McCaughrean<br />
Philip Pullman<br />
Sempé & Goscinny<br />
Alex Shearer<br />
Francesca Simon<br />
Dubravka Ugresič
Fiction 7<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com
About the author:<br />
Marek Krajewski (b. 1966)<br />
was for many years a classics<br />
lecturer at the University of<br />
Wroclaw but a few years ago<br />
he quit lecturing in favour of<br />
writing literary thrillers. He<br />
is the author of a best-selling<br />
series of novels featuring<br />
Kriminalabtailung Direktor<br />
Eberhard Mock and inspector<br />
Edward Popielski. Krajewski’s<br />
debut Śmierć w Breslau<br />
(Death in Breslau) appeared<br />
in 1999. This one and the<br />
subsequent novels from the<br />
Breslau series have been<br />
published in 12 countries and<br />
the rights to the series have<br />
been sold to 18 countries.<br />
Marek Krajewski’s major<br />
awards include: Polityka’s<br />
Passport, an award given to<br />
the author of the best literary<br />
achievement in a certain year,<br />
the High 8Calibre<br />
Award for<br />
the best crime novel of the<br />
year and the Wroclaw Mayor<br />
Award.<br />
He lives in Wroclaw and<br />
teaches creative writing in<br />
Krakow.<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com
Marek Krajewski<br />
The Erinyes<br />
Praise for Marek Krajewski’s previous novels:<br />
“Krajewski has Mankell’s<br />
sharp eye for detail,<br />
but he has, too, a more<br />
sophisticated frame<br />
of reference that may<br />
intrigue fans of Umberto<br />
Eco and Boris Akunin...<br />
[an] erudite novel... The<br />
atmosphere of the novel<br />
is claustrophobic... Death<br />
in Breslau is a stylish,<br />
intelligent and original<br />
addition to the genre.”<br />
Financial Times<br />
FICTION<br />
About The Erinyes:<br />
The linchpin of Marek<br />
Krajewski’s new novel is<br />
a meeting that although<br />
specious, is also relevant<br />
to the plot, between a well<br />
preserved old lady and<br />
a very elderly gent who<br />
“stinks like a corpse” – as<br />
he himself puts it – on<br />
the Breslau Marketplace.<br />
This scene takes place in<br />
modern times, on a warm<br />
summer morning in 2008.<br />
The gentleman tells the<br />
lady a story in which he<br />
features as the hero.<br />
And so we shift to Lwow<br />
on the eve of the Second<br />
World War and at once we<br />
get a sense of déjà vu, as<br />
the events described seem<br />
somehow familiar.<br />
“The city of Breslau (today’s<br />
Wroclaw) is as much<br />
a character in this thriller<br />
as the parade of gothic<br />
loons that inhabit it.”<br />
Daily Telegraph<br />
“Part of the black magic<br />
in this book is the<br />
reimagination of what<br />
is now the Polish city of<br />
Wroclaw as it was for 700<br />
years, the German city of<br />
Breslau.”<br />
The Times<br />
In fact, it is exactly the<br />
same day, the very same<br />
courtyard, the same grisly<br />
sight, and the same hideous<br />
murder we witnessed in<br />
Krajewski’s previous book,<br />
The Minotaur’s Head. The<br />
broken, crushed, crippled<br />
body of three-year-old<br />
Henio Pytka is found by<br />
chance in a courtyard privy.<br />
This time further events will<br />
develop around this murder.<br />
Solving the riddle of this<br />
despicable offence can only<br />
be tackled by one man –<br />
Commissioner Edward<br />
Popielski.<br />
It will soon transpire that<br />
the child’s death and its<br />
perpetrator are far closer to<br />
Popielski than might have<br />
“Krajewski’s vision of<br />
Breslau in 1933... is<br />
reminiscent of Georg<br />
Grosz... Death in Breslau<br />
isn’t just an exciting<br />
mystery, it’s the story<br />
of a lost Fatherland...<br />
Wonderful.”<br />
The Guardian<br />
seemed possible, and that<br />
is because the degenerate<br />
who committed this act<br />
deserving the intervention<br />
of the Erinyes themselves,<br />
is targeting the youngest<br />
and most innocent citizens<br />
of Lwow. And besides<br />
the victim, Henio Pytka,<br />
these include Popelski’s<br />
own eighteen-month-old<br />
grandson, Jerzyk.<br />
So the hunt for the<br />
evildoer begins. Across<br />
the cobblestones of Lwow,<br />
picking up false leads and<br />
letting them fool him, the<br />
Commissioner conducts<br />
an inquiry that leads to at<br />
least one misfortune along<br />
the way, the emotional<br />
breakdown of some and<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Ukraine (Urbino)<br />
9<br />
then others, and fi nally<br />
an error pregnant with<br />
consequences of the most<br />
incredible kind. As ever,<br />
the culprit will be found,<br />
caught and punished,<br />
but in this case it will be<br />
an exceptionally Pyrrhic<br />
victory. The price that will<br />
have to be paid for it will<br />
be far higher than that<br />
of a cup of coffee at the<br />
smartest café on Hetman’s<br />
Embankment. Alecto,<br />
Tisiphone and Megaera –<br />
the Erinyes, present<br />
Popielski and his family<br />
with a very expensive bill.<br />
There’s a corpse-like smell<br />
in the air.<br />
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RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Ukraine (Urbino)<br />
10<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
Praise for Marek Krajewski’s previous novels:<br />
“Krajewski has Mankell’s<br />
sharp eye for detail,<br />
but he has, too, a more<br />
sophisticated frame<br />
of reference that may<br />
intrigue fans of Umberto<br />
Eco and Boris Akunin...<br />
[an] erudite novel... The<br />
atmosphere of the novel<br />
is claustrophobic... Death<br />
in Breslau is a stylish,<br />
intelligent and original<br />
addition to the genre.”<br />
Financial Times<br />
About Charon’s Numbers:<br />
May 1929. Lviv. Comissioner<br />
Edward Popielski was<br />
thrown out of police for<br />
insubordination. Finally, he<br />
has enough time for solving<br />
equations and… love. It is<br />
the beautiful Renata who<br />
talks him into undertaking<br />
a risky job that soon lands<br />
him in trouble. An Lviv<br />
is once again is unquiet.<br />
One brutal murder after<br />
“The city of Breslau (today’s<br />
Wroclaw) is as much<br />
a character in this thriller<br />
as the parade of gothic<br />
loons that inhabit it.”<br />
Daily Telegraph<br />
“Part of the black magic<br />
in this book is the<br />
reimagination of what<br />
is now the Polish city of<br />
Wroclaw as it was for 700<br />
years, the German city of<br />
Breslau.”<br />
The Times<br />
another. And only the police<br />
know what is written in<br />
a mysterious letter from the<br />
murderer.<br />
In Charon’s Numbers,<br />
Popielski has a chance to<br />
change his life – get back to<br />
the police and start a family<br />
with a beloved woman.<br />
But love is blind, just like<br />
justice…<br />
Marek Krajewski<br />
Charon’s Numbers<br />
“Krajewski’s vision of<br />
Breslau in 1933... is<br />
reminiscent of Georg<br />
Grosz... Death in Breslau<br />
isn’t just an exciting<br />
mystery, it’s the story<br />
of a lost Fatherland...<br />
Wonderful.”<br />
The Guardian<br />
FICTION
Kazimierz Kutz<br />
The Fifth Part of the World<br />
About the author:<br />
Kazimierz Kutz was born<br />
in 1929 in Szopienice,<br />
Upper Silesia. He is one<br />
of the most famous Polish<br />
fi lm and theatre directors<br />
and was engaged in the<br />
formation of the most<br />
important movements in<br />
the Polish cinema such as<br />
nouvelle vague polonaise<br />
or moral anxiety cinema.<br />
In his fi lms he is always<br />
uncompromising and<br />
FICTION<br />
About:<br />
Polish Silesia, the fi fth part<br />
of the world, is a place<br />
where borders disappear<br />
and history plays with<br />
people and nationalities.<br />
It is not possible to close<br />
this place within a rigid<br />
framework or to understand<br />
it from the beginning to<br />
the end. All one can do is<br />
to discover it slowly, like<br />
a kaleidoscope image made<br />
of a thousand amusing,<br />
fascinating and mysterious<br />
stories.<br />
direct, he likes to portray<br />
the beauty of life and the<br />
dilemmas of simple people.<br />
Kutz received several<br />
important prizes both in<br />
Poland and abroad. In<br />
1999 the readers of the<br />
most popular Polish daily,<br />
Gazeta Wyborcza, granted<br />
Kutz the title of the most<br />
famous living Silesian of<br />
the 20th century. In 2006<br />
the Polish, German and<br />
It took Kazimierz Kutz<br />
several years to write his<br />
fi rst novel. He listened<br />
to local anecdotes and<br />
family epics, which allowed<br />
him to create a colourful<br />
multigenerational<br />
panorama of Silesia,<br />
a land somewhere on the<br />
border of Poland, Czech<br />
Republic and Germany. Kutz<br />
shows Silesia through the<br />
memories of a man who is<br />
trying to solve some family<br />
mystery from the past.<br />
Both the author and the<br />
main character are trying<br />
French LGBT organizations<br />
awarded him the Tolerance<br />
Prize in recognition of<br />
his work in the fi eld of<br />
antidiscrimination of<br />
homosexual people.<br />
Since 1997 Kazimierz<br />
Kutz has been involved<br />
in the Polish political life<br />
and at the moment he is<br />
an MP representing the<br />
central liberal Platforma<br />
Obywatelska.<br />
to fi nd the right language,<br />
which would help them<br />
understand the changes<br />
brought by the passage of<br />
time and for that means<br />
they use Polish and the<br />
Silesian dialect.<br />
Kutz is a master storyteller<br />
and his tales, both funny<br />
and terrifying, portray<br />
a whole spectrum of<br />
characters who look for<br />
their place in the world:<br />
they contend with their<br />
fate, fi ght and emigrate,<br />
philosophise or take life<br />
lightly.<br />
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11<br />
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Fot. Bożydar Pająk
12<br />
RIGHTS AVAILABLE:<br />
World<br />
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About the author:<br />
About:<br />
Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
The Horizon<br />
Wiesław Myśliwski is the author of novels and plays<br />
which are usually discussed in the context of “peasant<br />
literature”, dealing with the problems of the identities of<br />
villages and their inhabitants in times of historical change.<br />
However, his work transcends this literary category thanks<br />
to its philosophical and anthropological importance.<br />
He is the author of, among others, the novel Naked Orchard<br />
(1967), the play The Steward (1978) and the novel The<br />
Palace (1970). Myśliwski’s broadest epic of the peasant<br />
fate is the novel Stone upon Stone (1984), a masterpiece of<br />
post-war Polish literature, the apotheosis of the peasant<br />
tradition.<br />
FICTION<br />
This is a new edition of one of the most important novels<br />
of the last decade. It won the 1997 Nike Literary Prize for<br />
the best book of the year. The novel is set in a provincial<br />
world, seen through the eyes of an adolescent boy.<br />
The plot, the protagonists and the events in this novel are<br />
like the reality that surrounds us – not fully transparent<br />
and explainable, demanding to pay close attention, and<br />
to consider our inner sense and the consequences of our<br />
actions.<br />
Jerzy Jarzębski
Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
A Treatise on Bean-Shelling<br />
About:<br />
In a monologue to his<br />
mysterious visitor, the<br />
protagonist of Myśliwski’s<br />
novel sums up his whole<br />
life in one day, as he shells<br />
beans. The intricately<br />
crafted story with its<br />
varying temporal planes<br />
offers an insight into hidden<br />
senses of human destiny,<br />
the relation of chance and<br />
fate, the difference between<br />
the authentic and the sham,<br />
or normality and madness.<br />
The great historical<br />
fresco encompasses the<br />
Winner of the 2006 Nike Literary Prize.<br />
FICTION<br />
Wiesław Myśliwski<br />
Stone upon Stone<br />
About :<br />
protagonist’s childhood<br />
marred by the trauma<br />
of war, his youth with its<br />
delusions and lies, and the<br />
everyday life in a country<br />
on which “the best system<br />
in the world” is imposed,<br />
the ensuing Wander – and<br />
Bildungsjahre, a stint of<br />
earning a living abroad, and<br />
fi nally the time of summing<br />
up the bitter knowledge, the<br />
harvest of a long life.<br />
A Treatise on Bean-Shelling<br />
is not only a huge epic<br />
panorama, but fi rst<br />
First published in 1984 Stone upon Stone is Myśliwski’s<br />
broadest epic (1984), a masterpiece of postwar Polish<br />
literature, the apotheosis of the peasant tradition.<br />
and foremost a great<br />
metaphysical novel. Probing<br />
into the Mystery, posing<br />
fundamental existential<br />
questions, tapping the wall<br />
of darkness, Myśliwski<br />
offers no easy answers<br />
or cheap consolations.<br />
He never deceives us<br />
that the Mystery can be<br />
known; on the contrary, he<br />
insists on the need to ask<br />
the questions again and<br />
again despite the acute<br />
awareness that nothing but<br />
darkness lies ahead.<br />
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13<br />
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14<br />
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Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
About the author:<br />
Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
(b. 1967) studied theology,<br />
philosophy as well as<br />
Icelandic language and<br />
literature. He wrote seven<br />
books (two collections of<br />
his poetry have appeared in<br />
Icelandic). For over 10 years<br />
he studied and worked in<br />
Reykjavik (including work<br />
in a psychiatric hospital and<br />
an old people’s home). He<br />
moved to Vienna in 2007.<br />
Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
published a collection<br />
of stories Stacja Bielawa<br />
Zachodnia (Bielawa<br />
Zachodnia Station) in 2003,<br />
reprinted as Wariat (Madman)<br />
in 2007. He earned his fame<br />
with a quasi-novel consisting<br />
of two novellas, Dom<br />
Róży. Krýsuvík (The House of<br />
Róża. Krýsuvík), shortlisted<br />
for Poland’s most prestigious<br />
literary prize, the Nike<br />
Literary Prize. In 2007<br />
Klimko published two<br />
novels, Kołysanka dla<br />
wisielca (Lullaby for the<br />
Hanged Man) and Raz. Dwa.<br />
Trzy (One. Two. Three). Also<br />
in 2007 he was shortlisted<br />
for the weekly Polityka’s<br />
prize for the most original<br />
young Polish artists.<br />
His life story is a ready-<br />
-made fi lm script. He<br />
is a traveller, living in<br />
chilly Poland and even<br />
chillier Iceland, and also<br />
a theologian, philosopher<br />
and specialist in Icelandic<br />
philology. Based in Vienna,<br />
he travels all around<br />
Europe and is a sharp<br />
observer of his native<br />
Poland. To date his books<br />
have been published in<br />
Italy, France and Bulgaria,<br />
immediately winning<br />
both critical approval and<br />
readers’ appreciation.
Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki<br />
Bornholm, Bornholm<br />
About:<br />
Two narrations, two stories<br />
connected by accident or<br />
fate. The characters of<br />
Dobrzaniecki’s latest novel<br />
live in the state of constant<br />
tension. They fi ght – their<br />
instincts, desires, and<br />
their emotions. They fi ght<br />
for dignity and the right to<br />
decide about the course of<br />
their lives. Both heroes of<br />
the novel are united by the<br />
same desire, articulated<br />
repeatedly by different<br />
voices.<br />
The fi rst hero is Horst<br />
Bartlik – biology teacher,<br />
FICTION<br />
his former self-confi dence<br />
and masculinity. He did<br />
not expect war to give him<br />
a chance to love again.<br />
Bartlik’s story is interrupted<br />
by a story of a young man,<br />
whose only listener is his<br />
mother in a coma. She is<br />
the at the same time the<br />
object of her son’s love<br />
and hatred. He tells her<br />
his whole life because her<br />
expectations were always<br />
overwhelming him, and<br />
only now he has a chance to<br />
articulate that. It was hard<br />
for him to become a man,<br />
with her overprotectiveness<br />
husband, father of two<br />
children. Unfortunately, he<br />
is unable to be happy. All his<br />
small and big yearnings are<br />
suppressed by his wife, who<br />
also begins to be sexually<br />
frigid, which frustrates<br />
Horst immensely. He begins<br />
to feel true disgust towards<br />
his own wife, he becomes<br />
more and more depressed<br />
by the idea that the only<br />
thing that keeps them<br />
together are the children.<br />
They act out their miserable<br />
roles for them, but Horst<br />
has more and more<br />
and with no role model –<br />
she never allowed him<br />
to meet his father. Her<br />
personality infl uenced his<br />
whole life, diffi cult as it was.<br />
The amount of defeats and<br />
miseries he experienced is<br />
simply horrifying.<br />
There is something<br />
fascinating in this novel.<br />
Perhaps it is a unique<br />
austerity, brought to<br />
literature only by men.<br />
First of all – a tragedy of<br />
people so deeply wounded<br />
that they are unable to be<br />
happy. Their struggles are<br />
like a training ground full<br />
diffi culties with hiding signs<br />
of rebellion. He escapes to<br />
a new place which reminds<br />
him of his childhood. He<br />
wants to forget for at least<br />
a moment, to encounter<br />
something other than<br />
frigidity. He waits only for<br />
an opportunity to escape,<br />
but fate faces him with<br />
another challenge, World<br />
War Two, even though he<br />
already fi ghts in a private<br />
war at home with his<br />
wife. Directed to the base<br />
at Bornholm, he slowly<br />
awakens to life, regains<br />
of the worst obstacles –<br />
people who hurt them. And<br />
each hurt leaves a deep<br />
mark they have to learn<br />
to live with. They fall, they<br />
rise. Endlessly, for the fi ght<br />
continues.<br />
Bornholm, Bornholm is<br />
a moving depiction of<br />
loneliness and internal fi ght<br />
written by theauthor who<br />
tells the most important<br />
truths in a style balancing<br />
on the verge of seriousness<br />
and joke. Dobrzaniecki<br />
creates a world which we<br />
observe with a smile or<br />
disbelief.<br />
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Paweł Huelle<br />
About the author:<br />
Paweł Huelle is a novelist and poet.<br />
He was born in Gdansk in 1957 and<br />
graduated in Polish Philology at the<br />
University of Gdansk. He worked<br />
as a university lecturer, journalist<br />
and director of the Gdansk Polish<br />
Television Centre. Honoured with<br />
many prestigious literary awards,<br />
Huelle is one of the most successful<br />
contemporary Polish writers.<br />
His fi rst novel Who Was David Weiser<br />
(1987) was hailed by the critics as “the<br />
book of the decade,” “a masterpiece”<br />
and “a literary triumph” and has<br />
been published in Germany, Spain,<br />
France and Finland. It is a story<br />
of a mysterious disappearance of<br />
a Jewish boy during his summer<br />
vacations. 16 Many years later Dawidek’s<br />
friend sets out to investigate the<br />
events that came to shape his entire<br />
life. The novel has been described as<br />
a coming-of-age story, an adventure<br />
novel or even as a philosophical<br />
treatise.<br />
Like Who Was David Weiser?, Huelle’s<br />
next two books Stories for a Time of<br />
Relocation (1991) and First Love<br />
and Other Stories (1996) are set in his<br />
home town of Gdansk and its environs,<br />
even though they are concerned with<br />
different historical periods and social<br />
milieus.<br />
When I fi nish a book, I hope that some<br />
images will settle in my mind. I hope<br />
there are some of those in the book –<br />
powerful images for the readers to take<br />
away.<br />
From an interview<br />
in The Independent<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com
Paweł Huelle<br />
Who Was David Weiser?<br />
About:<br />
“An intoxicating read,” “a masterpiece,” “novel of the<br />
decade,” “a book so good it’s fearsome” – this is just<br />
a random pick from the enthusiastic praise showered on<br />
Who Was David Weiser? by the critics in Poland and abroad.<br />
Hailed as the best Polish novel of the 1980’s, translated<br />
into a number of languages, it made Paweł Huelle famous<br />
and granted him a secure position as one of Poland’s most<br />
important contemporary writers.<br />
In 2000 it was adapted for the screen. According to the<br />
director, Wojciech Marczewski, Weiser (starring, among<br />
others, Marek Kondrat, Krystyna Janda, Piotr Fronczewski<br />
and Zbigniew Zamachowski) is a fi lm about “memory, its<br />
terrible power and its fallibility.”<br />
None of the interpretations of Paweł Huelle’s novel have<br />
solved the mystery of the little David Weiser. Who was he?<br />
Why did he draw his friends’ attention to himself? What truth<br />
was hidden behind his unusual ideas and experiments? And<br />
fi nally, why did he disappear all of a sudden?<br />
FICTION<br />
Paweł Huelle<br />
Cold Sea Tales<br />
About:<br />
In these eleven stories<br />
Pawel Huelle shows his<br />
master craftsmanship<br />
as a teller of beautiful,<br />
evocative stories. Though<br />
each tale is independent,<br />
they all share a setting on<br />
the Baltic coast, whether<br />
of Poland or of Sweden,<br />
and they all feature a large,<br />
signifi cant book, whether it<br />
is the Bible or a homeware<br />
catalogue. They cover<br />
a wide range of genres,<br />
including black comedy –<br />
such as Gendarme Polanke’s<br />
Fifteen Shots of Vodka, in<br />
which the gendarme drinks,<br />
while in parallel scenes the<br />
homeless woman he has<br />
terrorised on the road is<br />
exposed to the elements;<br />
mystery – such as Oland, in<br />
which an enslaved shepherd<br />
on a remote Scandinavian<br />
island encounters a strange<br />
and powerful magus who<br />
shows him the way to<br />
salvation, or Doctor Cheng,<br />
in which a man encounters<br />
a Chinese mystic who<br />
reveals to him the secret<br />
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of his wife’s sudden death;<br />
and real events – such<br />
as The Bicycle Express, in<br />
which the narrator recalls<br />
the excitement of the days<br />
when he helped deliver<br />
news bulletins from the<br />
striking dockyard at the<br />
height of the Solidarity<br />
union, or The Flight to<br />
Egypt, where an artist tries<br />
to befriend a beautiful<br />
Chechen refugee and her<br />
suspicious husband.<br />
17<br />
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18<br />
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About:<br />
The action of Pawel Huelle’s<br />
newest novel takes place in<br />
Gdansk, during a single day,<br />
in the indescript, but not too<br />
distant future. The city has<br />
undergone some substantial<br />
changes; a couple of<br />
streets have again<br />
switched names, mosques<br />
have sprung up near<br />
churches, the lives of the<br />
residents are sporadically<br />
paralyzed by mysterious<br />
explosions – in which some<br />
see the workings of Islamic<br />
fundamentalists, others<br />
the workings of a madman,<br />
while others still suspect<br />
sabotage by the producer of<br />
Monsignore brand wine.<br />
A group of friends from<br />
old times are heading to<br />
a photo session organized<br />
by Matthew, their mutual<br />
friend, who wants to paint<br />
The Last Supper. For each<br />
of them, this day, full of<br />
activities and unforeseeable<br />
coincidences will prove<br />
signifi cant in another way:<br />
each of them will have to<br />
confront their past and<br />
their signifi cant existential<br />
choices. The fate of the<br />
protagonists – in whom,<br />
as if in a mirror, a whole<br />
About:<br />
Paweł Huelle<br />
The Last Supper<br />
generation of Poles can see<br />
themselves – is just one<br />
tier of this exceptionally<br />
dense literary work. Using<br />
Mateusz’s painting as<br />
a springboard the book also<br />
continually takes up the<br />
controversies surrounding<br />
modern art. The Last<br />
Supper for all its structural<br />
mastery, erudite fi nesse and<br />
its handy dose of humour,<br />
is above all a merciless<br />
reckoning with Polish<br />
religiosity; it is a poignant<br />
questioning of who we<br />
actually are and what really<br />
constitutes our faith.<br />
FICTION<br />
Paweł Huelle<br />
Stories for a Time of Relocation<br />
A collection of short stories which elevate the events<br />
from the narrator’s childhood and youth to a mythical<br />
plane, thus lending to perfectly ordinary things<br />
extraordinary meanings. It turns out that everyday life<br />
is rich in secrets, full of omens and signs which can and<br />
must be deciphered. As the stories unfold, they form<br />
a family saga which takes place mostly in Gdańsk and<br />
Żuławy and Kaszuby, the surrounding countryside of<br />
varied and complex history. It is as much the history of<br />
these places that is told, as the lives of the people who<br />
used to inhabit them and then moved, and those who<br />
succeeded them and settled for good, whether out of<br />
their own free will or out of necessity.
Paweł Huelle<br />
Mercedes-Benz<br />
Over 50 000 copies sold in Poland!<br />
About:<br />
A most entertaining short<br />
novel, which begins in truly<br />
dramatic circumstances:<br />
the main character called<br />
Paweł (just like the Author<br />
to whom he is surprisingly<br />
similar) begins his driving<br />
lessons and almost dies<br />
of shame and humiliation.<br />
Trying to delay an utter<br />
calamity, he resorts to a<br />
truly Hrabalesque trick by<br />
beginning to weave a story<br />
about his grandparents’<br />
cars. So we read of a brandnew<br />
Citroën being smashed<br />
by a train or of a mythic<br />
Mercedes-Benz in which<br />
FICTION<br />
Paweł Huelle<br />
Castorp<br />
About:<br />
his grandparents, along<br />
with some friends, chase<br />
a balloon thus inventing<br />
a new type of automobile<br />
“fox hunt.” As the story<br />
gradually moves to the<br />
present, Paweł, magnetised<br />
by his instructor’s beauty<br />
and sensitivity, gets to<br />
know some dramatic and<br />
beautiful facts from her<br />
life. This part of the story is<br />
more about different human<br />
fates in Poland at the time<br />
of economic and political<br />
changes. But at some<br />
point Paweł fi nishes his<br />
classes and parts with his<br />
infatuating instructor. The<br />
story ends with the news of<br />
Huelle’s Castorp can be read as a variation on the Magic<br />
Mountain theme, a sort of fantasy based on the Gdansk<br />
motifs in Thomas Mann’s novel, particularly cherished by the<br />
Gdansk-based writer. The life of Hans Castorp, a student<br />
at the Imperial Technical Academy, is monotonous and<br />
predictable, until the unexpected outbreak of a feeling<br />
for a beautiful, unattainable Polish woman. The ensuing<br />
psychic crisis leaves him pondering existential questions<br />
and discovering the darker side of life. With the Gdansk<br />
old town, its fi n-de-siècle quarter Wrzeszcz and the<br />
popular seaside resort Sopot for action settings, the novel<br />
is blessed with a distinct, unforgettable atmosphere.<br />
Bohumil Hrabal’s death and<br />
a most impressive literary<br />
praise of his writing and life.<br />
Being an extremely skilled<br />
narrator, Huelle uses<br />
Hrabal’s idea well and<br />
alludes frequently to his<br />
writing yet it is done in a<br />
very non-obtrusive, and<br />
well-balanced manner. The<br />
narration is multi-levelled<br />
and multidimensional,<br />
motives from Hrabal’s<br />
work are interwoven with<br />
contemporary ones as<br />
well as with a nostalgic,<br />
humorous and warm<br />
expedition into a family’s<br />
past.<br />
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About the author:<br />
Antoni Libera is a writer, translator and stage director. Among his translations into Polish are all<br />
of Samuel Beckett’s plays and much of his prose. He has also directed many of Beckett’s plays,<br />
both in Poland and abroad (among others Krapp’s Last Tape with David Warrilow at the Haymarket<br />
Leicester and Riverside Studios 1989–1990, and Endgame with Barry MacGovern at the Gate<br />
Theatre, presented at the Barbican in 1999), and has presented them at a number of international<br />
theatre festivals. Beckett, with whom he was in regular contact, called him “my deputy in Eastern<br />
Europe.” He has also translated and written librettos, among others for the Polish composer<br />
Krzysztof Penderecki. In 1990 he made his debut as a playwright at the Royal Court Theatre in<br />
London with his “Platonic dialogue” entitled Eastern Promises (published by Methuen).<br />
His 1998 novel Madame was awarded a number of prizes in Poland and translated into<br />
20 languages. It was published in English by Farrar Straus & Giroux (1999) and Canongate (2000).<br />
In 2002 it was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and in 2004 nominated for the Prix<br />
Européen de Littérature.<br />
20<br />
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Antoni Libera<br />
Madame<br />
About:<br />
Madame is a novel about<br />
a writer’s coming-of-age.<br />
It ex plores the effects<br />
of dreams and fantasy,<br />
the magic of art and the<br />
possibilities of imagination;<br />
it subtly unveils the nature<br />
of myth and the ways in<br />
which myth comes into<br />
being. An immensely<br />
rich, multilayered<br />
book, part parody, part<br />
fi ctional au to biog raphy,<br />
Madame chronicles the<br />
Over 90 000 copies sold in Poland!<br />
Antoni Libera<br />
Godot and His Shadow<br />
About:<br />
Godot and His Shadow is an<br />
autobiographical tale of<br />
the magic of literature and<br />
the author’s fascination<br />
with Samuel Beckett, one<br />
of the twentieth century’s<br />
most enigmatic writers. For<br />
Libera, the poetic oeuvre<br />
of the “master of sadness<br />
and loneliness” achieves<br />
the dimension of prophetic<br />
speech with the power to<br />
transform people and force<br />
them to know themselves.<br />
It is the story of an epiphany<br />
and the journey following in<br />
stages of the young<br />
narrator’s journey through<br />
frustration, humiliation and<br />
disillusionment to his fi nal<br />
acceptance of his lot as<br />
a writer. At the same time it<br />
is a very moving novel about<br />
strength and frailty, fi rst<br />
love, and a young man’s<br />
comic and painful attempts<br />
to come to terms with the<br />
confl ict between the ideals<br />
of the spirit and the realities<br />
of the fl esh – and to<br />
rec on cile, through art, the<br />
FICTION<br />
the footsteps of the man to<br />
whom the epiphany is owed.<br />
His eponymous Madame was<br />
a fi ctitious character; Beckett<br />
is real. In this book again<br />
the narrator, like a detective,<br />
follows the leads to the<br />
culmination: from Warsaw<br />
via New York and London<br />
to Paris, where an unusual<br />
encounter takes place. This<br />
time, however, a different<br />
thing is at stake. Not love, but<br />
the answer to the question of<br />
the meaning of life.<br />
opposing forces of reason<br />
and passion.<br />
Readers who admired<br />
Bernhard Schlink’s The<br />
Reader won’t want to<br />
miss this scintillating<br />
bil dungsroman...<br />
A sophisticated coming-of-<br />
-age tale that’s also delicious<br />
high entertainment. Put this<br />
one already on the list of this<br />
year’s best novels.<br />
Kirkus Reviews<br />
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Maria Nurowska<br />
About the author:<br />
Maria Nurowska was born in 1944 in the<br />
village of Okółek in Suwalskie province;<br />
she graduated from Warsaw University in<br />
Polish and Slavic philology; she made her<br />
debut in 1974 in Literatura monthly.<br />
Undoubtedly, part of the charm of Maria<br />
Nurowska’s books origins in the fascinating<br />
biography of the author: a granddaughter<br />
of an aristocrat, the owner of a palace<br />
in Homl, a daughter of a legionary and<br />
a Polish resistance soldier – later a zealous<br />
communist, defi nitely an amazing woman.<br />
The heroines of Nurowska’s books are truly<br />
exceptional women, full of passion and love,<br />
by far surpassing their partners entangled<br />
in politics, ideology, and broken by history’s<br />
paradoxes.<br />
Nurowska is a representative of the so<br />
called women’s writing. She is at present<br />
one of the most popular authors in<br />
Poland. She often uses the convention<br />
of melodrama (for example in the novels<br />
SPANISH EYES, LOVE LETTERS, MAIDENS<br />
AND WIDOWS) to create a psychological<br />
portrait of the character or to show her<br />
confl ict with the outside world. In the<br />
latter instance, she sets the narration in<br />
a certain historic period (World War Two)<br />
or in the present times.<br />
Her writing is based fi rst of all on the<br />
poetics of the narration romance and<br />
psychological novel, but she also uses<br />
elements of novel of manners and sociopolitical<br />
novel. Her writing method is to<br />
consciously use various aspects of kitsch<br />
and emotions provoked by it; she confronts<br />
stereotypes with the unique, trivia with<br />
the rare, she triggers easy emotions and<br />
surprisingly deep refl ections; the constructs<br />
her characters with great skill, she<br />
develops the plot lightly, balancing on the<br />
verge of consciously chosen exaggeration<br />
and naivety, she proves how grotesque can<br />
be the fate of a woman who is deeply and<br />
stubbornly in love.
Maria Nurowska<br />
Your Name<br />
About:<br />
The quiet life of Elisabeth<br />
Connery, a thirty-something<br />
art historian, which was<br />
fi lled with her work at<br />
a New York college and<br />
meetings with friends,<br />
suddenly changes, when her<br />
husband Jeff disappears<br />
without a trace during<br />
a solitary research trip to<br />
Ukraine. Elisabeth decided<br />
to go search for him. Lviv,<br />
which she considered exotic<br />
and scary, turns out to<br />
be a city impressing with<br />
tradition, but at the same<br />
time destroyed by years of<br />
communism, anarchy and<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Return to Lvov<br />
About:<br />
Return to Lvov – the second<br />
volume in the literary cycle<br />
of Maria Nurowska begun in<br />
Your Name – is a continuation<br />
of the story of Elisabeth,<br />
Andrew and Oksana’s son<br />
Alek, whom Elisabeth takes<br />
to the States. Overcoming<br />
arrogance of the authorities.<br />
Thanks to Andrew Sanicki,<br />
a Ukrainian lawyer she<br />
meets on the way, the<br />
heroine manages to reach<br />
an associate of Georgij<br />
Gongadze, an opposition<br />
journalists killed by<br />
Ukrainian security service.<br />
Elisabeth suspects that the<br />
same could have happened<br />
to Jeff, who worked closely<br />
with Gongadze. But she does<br />
not lose hope – she decides<br />
to undertake a dangerous<br />
journey to the Chernobyl<br />
zone, and then to Chechen<br />
Republic. She meets Oksana<br />
Krywenko, an oppositionist<br />
kept in jail and accused of<br />
the boy’s mistrust, caused<br />
by his feeling of being lost<br />
In a foreign environment,<br />
is a huge challenge for<br />
Elisabeth. But there are even<br />
bigger challenges awaiting<br />
her: motherhood she did not<br />
want, which will change her<br />
and Andrew’s life and another<br />
journey to Ukraine, where the<br />
kidnapping Jeff Connery,<br />
and – as it turns out –<br />
a mother of his several years<br />
old son Alek. The fates of<br />
the two women are suddenly<br />
connected, and the journey<br />
to wild Caucasus turns out<br />
not to be the most risky of<br />
Elisabeth’s undertakings.<br />
Your Name, the fi rst novel<br />
In Nurowska’s „Ukrainian<br />
trilogy”, continued in Return<br />
to Lvov, is a story of courage<br />
and sacrifi ce, helplessness<br />
in the face of evil and love<br />
which sometimes can be<br />
diffi cult to accept. Distinctive<br />
characters, references<br />
to the most important<br />
contemporary events make<br />
political situation becomes<br />
even more tense. What will<br />
be the course of their life torn<br />
between two continents? The<br />
mystery of the disappearance<br />
of Jeff Connery, Elisabeth’s<br />
husband, is still unsolved – is<br />
there still a change to fi nd<br />
him?<br />
Maria Nurowska’s novel,<br />
with the background of the<br />
recent dramatic events<br />
in Ukraine, is a story of<br />
passion and courage,<br />
perversity of fate which puts<br />
Your Name and Return to Lvov are two parts of „Ukrainian trilogy,” in which complicated<br />
fates of the characters intertwine with contemporary history of America and Ukraine, on<br />
the one side – the World Trade Centre tragedy and a loss of faith in one’s own country,<br />
and on the other side – fi ght for freedom and independence, against anarchy and<br />
foreign power. Love and betrayal, egoism and sacrifi ce, personal dramas and political<br />
confl icts – these novels of the one of the most popular Polish writers are moving stories,<br />
which even though are deeply rooted in the present, touch on the most universal human<br />
problems. The fi nal volume of the trilogy is the novel Two Loves.<br />
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Your Name a moving story<br />
that readers will remember<br />
for a long time. The fi nal<br />
volume of the trilogy is the<br />
novel Two Loves.<br />
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us constantly to the test,<br />
and also of faithfulness –<br />
both to ideas and emotions.<br />
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About:<br />
The new, three-volume<br />
edition of the famous<br />
saga by Maria Nurowska,<br />
which at the beginning of<br />
1990’s was adapted both<br />
for cinema and television,<br />
covers over a hundred<br />
years of Polish history.<br />
The fates of six women<br />
are interwoven with the<br />
fate of the country. From<br />
the defeat of the January<br />
Uprising, captivity and<br />
About:<br />
Poland, 1982. A wellknown<br />
writer asks<br />
a young journalist who<br />
fell into disfavour to<br />
collect documentation on<br />
countess Krystyna Skarbek,<br />
an aristocrat of Jewish<br />
origins. For the journalist,<br />
at the beginning her task<br />
is just a job, but soon the<br />
investigation draws her<br />
in, and the image of the<br />
woman emerging from it<br />
emigration, through<br />
Second Polish Republic,<br />
German occupation,<br />
communism, to Solidarity<br />
movement, martial law and<br />
contemporary times – we<br />
accompany Nurowska’s<br />
heroines, extraordinary<br />
women with strong<br />
characters, dramatic<br />
biographies, united by their<br />
love to the family home in<br />
Lechice.<br />
begins to fascinate her. The<br />
story she learns is truly<br />
exceptional. A clandestine<br />
agent of the Polish<br />
underground army, and<br />
later of the British secret<br />
service, beautiful Krystyna,<br />
who during war used the<br />
pseudonym Christine<br />
Granville, infl uences<br />
everyone who encounter<br />
her. Collecting lovers and<br />
heroic deeds, she shows<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Maidens and Widows, vol.1-3<br />
spends the time of the<br />
confl ict abroad. The both<br />
manage to survive the war,<br />
but as will be proved by<br />
later fate of Karolina, the<br />
long awaited liberation<br />
will not mean the same for<br />
everyone.<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
The Lover<br />
now caution – there is a thin<br />
boundary between bliss<br />
and death in her life. Maria<br />
Nurowska build a colourful<br />
and multi-layered story<br />
around the historic fi gure of<br />
Krystyna Skarbek. A story of<br />
a woman fi ghting cruel fate,<br />
full of contradictions, and<br />
never truly understood.
Maria Nurowska<br />
Russian Lover<br />
About:<br />
A love story of a fi fty years<br />
old Polish woman and<br />
a younger Russian man who<br />
is on a scholarship in Paris.<br />
The heroine travels there<br />
to give lectures on Polish<br />
literature and experiences<br />
her fi rst, big and much too<br />
late romance. Julia is forced<br />
to reconsider the choices<br />
she made in life. She fi ghts<br />
against her feelings and<br />
her body, but she loses that<br />
fi ght. In her novel, Maria<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
German Dance<br />
About:<br />
Nurowska plays with the<br />
stereotypes of the Russian,<br />
the Polish, the fi fty years<br />
old women and, fi nally, the<br />
stereotype of romance itself.<br />
When I am being asked<br />
what this novel is about,<br />
I answer: a triangle. He, she,<br />
and her body. Julia plays<br />
with her body, neglected<br />
for years, which suddenly<br />
against her will begins to<br />
demand attention. Her<br />
The street of Munich on the New Year’s Eve of 2000.<br />
Hidden in the crowd welcoming the new millennium is<br />
Eliza von Saarow, one of the heroines of the novel, who<br />
reminiscences about her youth age spent in Pomerania.<br />
She left there the ruins of a family residence, tombs of<br />
her ancestors and the love of her life. The second heroine,<br />
missionary Marianna von Saarow, dies of AIDS In Africa.<br />
The two women have been separated from each other<br />
since the time of war and exile by a family secret. Will they<br />
fi nd courage to face it as their lives come to an end?<br />
rebellion is hopeless. She<br />
has to capitulate, because<br />
one cannot live against<br />
biology. Love to a man and<br />
motherhood are the pillars<br />
of women’s fate. If one<br />
misses them – life loses<br />
stability. Therefore love to<br />
a much younger Man. She –<br />
Polish, professor, a visitor<br />
to Sorbonne. He – Russian<br />
historian on a scholarship to<br />
Paris.<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
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About:<br />
Maria Nurowska – one of the<br />
most popular Polish writers,<br />
known and appreciated<br />
in many countries around<br />
the world. Publication of<br />
each of her novels is an<br />
event. But her latest novel<br />
is truly unique. It is an<br />
amazing story of friendship<br />
between people and<br />
wolves. Kasia, a graduate<br />
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About:<br />
The third volume in the<br />
saga started with Your<br />
Name and Return to Lvov<br />
is a continuation of the<br />
story of Elizabeth Connery,<br />
Andrew Sanicki, their<br />
daughter, and Oksana’s<br />
son Alek. Elizabeth cannot<br />
escape her past. She is<br />
happily in love, but the<br />
thought of her husband’s<br />
of SGGW in Warsaw, comes<br />
to Bieszczady mountains<br />
to collect data for her<br />
PhD thesis on wolves.<br />
At the research station<br />
she meets Olgierd and<br />
Marcin. Diffi culties of life<br />
in primitive conditions<br />
bring the three scientists,<br />
who at the beginning were<br />
distrustful, together as<br />
friends, and with time two<br />
of them will be united by<br />
something more. The fi rst<br />
night observation of wolves<br />
is a start of great fascination<br />
for Katarzyna, and next<br />
even closer encounters with<br />
the pack create an almost<br />
mystical bond between<br />
them. This bond makes all<br />
city disappointments seem<br />
irrelevant.<br />
mysterious disappearance<br />
during a research trip to<br />
Ukraine still haunts her.<br />
She travels to Donieck to<br />
try to solve the mystery<br />
from a few years back.<br />
Soon, she will be a missing<br />
person herself, when no<br />
one can determine her<br />
location. The third volume<br />
in the Ukrainian trilogy is<br />
Kasia engages in defence<br />
of the animals, and she<br />
brings Polish sheepdogs to<br />
a village nearby, so they can<br />
drive the predators away<br />
and keep them away from<br />
human homes. Finally, she<br />
crosses paths with a local<br />
poacher, which puts her<br />
own life in danger.<br />
This book has been „writing<br />
itself” in my head since,<br />
as a fourteen-year-old<br />
girl I got off at Karwica<br />
Mazurska station in the Piski<br />
forest. My father had just<br />
been appointed at forest<br />
administration in Karwica,<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Two Loves<br />
full of references to recent<br />
political events in Ukraine,<br />
related to dramatic fates of<br />
the characters. Surprisingly<br />
relevant, and at the same<br />
time universal story of<br />
people constantly put to<br />
tests and fi ghting fate’s<br />
perversity.<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
To Feed the Wolves<br />
I was supposed to had been<br />
picked up from the train,<br />
but no one was waiting for<br />
me. I did not know that the<br />
village is several kilometres<br />
away. It was an autumn<br />
afternoon and as I started<br />
to walk, not really knowing<br />
if it was a good direction,<br />
darkness fell. Suddenly I saw<br />
several dark silhouettes<br />
crossing the road. I froze,<br />
but I had to move forward.<br />
For the rest of the way home<br />
I had a feeling there are fi ery<br />
eyes of the wolves on both<br />
sides of the road, that the<br />
wolves are guiding me.
Maria Nurowska<br />
Requiem for a Wolf<br />
About:<br />
Young director Joanna<br />
travels to Bieszczady<br />
to meet her idol, an<br />
exceptional fi lmmaker who<br />
comes back to Poland after<br />
forty years to build a house<br />
in Bieszczady. It turns out<br />
there was a tragic accident<br />
in the area recently –<br />
a young scientist Katarzyna,<br />
collecting materials for her<br />
PhD thesis on wolves, died<br />
from a poacher’s bullet. The<br />
villagers still remember<br />
Kasia, and they discover<br />
FICTION 27<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
The Moon over Zakopane<br />
similarities between Joanna<br />
and her. The heroine is<br />
intrigued and begins to<br />
search for information about<br />
the girl, contacts her school,<br />
rents the cabin in which<br />
Kasia lived. She starts to live<br />
Kasia’s life and although she<br />
knows nothing about wolves,<br />
she decides to fi nd and<br />
photograph them.<br />
In the meantime, the<br />
director, who at the<br />
beginning was reluctant<br />
about Joanna, starts to<br />
Follow-up to the famous novel To Feed the Wolves published in 2010.<br />
About:<br />
How did it all start? Why did<br />
I become a writer? When<br />
readers ask me about it,<br />
I think that my life was<br />
always guided by chance, so<br />
I became a writer by chance.<br />
The autobiographical<br />
novel of Maria Nurowska<br />
is not only a record of<br />
creative development and<br />
the stories behind novels<br />
of one of the most widely<br />
read and translated Polish<br />
writers. The Moon Over<br />
Zakopane is, among others,<br />
a story of homes: from<br />
the lost paradise of her<br />
father’s forester’s lodge,<br />
through fl ats which barely<br />
had room for a typewriter,<br />
to adventures related to<br />
the house of her dreams in<br />
Tatra mountains. In a world<br />
where fame is changeable,<br />
men – volatile, and reality,<br />
no matter if communistic<br />
or early capitalistic, is full<br />
of comical and often cruel<br />
show interest in her. The<br />
story becomes even more<br />
complicated when Olgierd<br />
appears in the village,<br />
determined to guard the<br />
wolves and her memories of<br />
Katarzyna.<br />
An excellent novel about<br />
fascination with somebody<br />
else’s life, dilemma<br />
and passion. About the<br />
mysterious word of wild<br />
animals which becomes an<br />
obsession.<br />
paradoxes, what becomes<br />
the most important (apart<br />
from love) is one’s own<br />
place in the world.<br />
Literary autobiography<br />
of Maria Nurowska will<br />
stay with readersa for<br />
a long time – full of vivid<br />
anecdotes and sharp, often<br />
ironic observations.<br />
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About:<br />
How many identities can<br />
one have? Does hiding the<br />
truth and leading a double<br />
life contradict true love?<br />
The Fate of Nurowska’s<br />
character is very<br />
complicated. Teenage Jew<br />
a Elżbieta Elsner, in order to<br />
save her father and herself<br />
from starvation in the<br />
ghetto, decides to become<br />
a prostitute. One of her<br />
clients, a high-ranking SS<br />
man gets her a Kennkarte<br />
and organizes her escape to<br />
the Aryan side. The heroine,<br />
under the name of Krystyna<br />
Chylińska, accidentally<br />
ends up in the house<br />
of doctor Korzecki. The<br />
Jewish girl and the Polish<br />
doctor, recipient of much<br />
later unsent letters, fall in<br />
love – a love that will last<br />
for decades. New family,<br />
relationship with a beloved<br />
About:<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Love Letters<br />
man, work as a translator –<br />
one could think it all<br />
grants happiness. But the<br />
war trauma is still vivid.<br />
Especially when suddenly<br />
the other one appears – like<br />
a ghostly shadow from the<br />
ghetto.<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Tango for Three<br />
Ola is the second wife of Zygmunt, her acting class<br />
teacher. She feels bad about his ex-wife Elżbieta, and she<br />
decides to help her. She comes up with an intrigue, the<br />
goal of which is to make them all act in Bulgakov’s play<br />
on Moliere and his two life partners – a younger and an<br />
older woman. Ola and Elżbieta gradually become friends,<br />
but it is a toxic relationship. They begin to act not only on<br />
the stage, but also in real life. Ola becomes a victim of<br />
her own trick – she gets lost. Tango for Three is a story<br />
about a diffi cult love, a feeling that on the one hand leads<br />
to catastrophe, but on the other – to a certain liberation.<br />
Only the discovery that we all act subsequent roles in the<br />
theatre of lives makes Ola fi ght for herself. Tango for three<br />
is a story told through emotions.
Maria Nurowska<br />
The Case of Nina S.<br />
About:<br />
Legal adviser Jerzy Baran<br />
was shot In his Warsaw<br />
apartment. The investigation<br />
is led by commissioner<br />
Zawadka, an experienced<br />
policeman, still looking for<br />
professional fulfi lment –<br />
a task that would change<br />
his life. His instinct tells him<br />
that Jerzy B. murder might<br />
be that case. Writer Nina<br />
S, an ex-lover of the victim,<br />
pleads guilty of the murder,<br />
but the commissioner does<br />
not believe her version of the<br />
story. To uncover the truth,<br />
FICTION 29<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Spanish Eyes<br />
About:<br />
We meet Anna and her<br />
daughter at a psychologist’s<br />
offi ce, as they try to solve<br />
Ewa’s problem, bulimia. If<br />
the girl is to truly recover,<br />
she needs therapy. The<br />
toxic love between her and<br />
her mother must turn into<br />
an emotion that will not<br />
hurt them. Is it possible<br />
for the daughter to repeat<br />
her mother’s fate? To<br />
what extent traumas from<br />
adolescence determine or<br />
lives and the lives of our<br />
he reads the writer’s journal<br />
and testimonies of her twin<br />
daughters. He learns stories<br />
of three women. Their<br />
desires, fears and secrets<br />
hidden for years. He enters<br />
the world where love is<br />
inseparable from meanness,<br />
and one has to fi ght<br />
constantly for emotion and<br />
dignity. It is a world, where<br />
every moment of inattention<br />
has a high price.<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
masterfully uses the genre<br />
of detective novel to create<br />
loved ones? Spanish Eyes<br />
is a story of a diffi cult love,<br />
adolescence, being lost,<br />
acceptance and suffering.<br />
Nurtowska’s heroine is<br />
a victim of history, leaving<br />
an indelible mark on her<br />
mind and later life.<br />
There is an amazing story<br />
related to writing Spanish<br />
Eyes. by the end of summer<br />
of 1988 I met a woman in the<br />
park. Even though she was<br />
no longer young, she had one<br />
a praise of love between<br />
mother and daughters,<br />
between one sister and<br />
another. She juxtaposes evil<br />
world of men and tender<br />
and gentle world of women.<br />
She juxtaposes a toxic<br />
emotion with the sensation<br />
it brings. The heroes of<br />
The case of Nina S. are<br />
tragic characters, crushed<br />
by history and dangerous<br />
emotions.<br />
of the most beautiful faces<br />
I had ever seen. I started<br />
talking to her. And suddenly,<br />
surprising us both, she<br />
started telling me her story.<br />
I turned out later I was her<br />
fi rst and only listener since<br />
she came back from exile in<br />
Siberia in 1953. She was sent<br />
there when she was fi fteen<br />
as a punishment for her<br />
participation in the Warsaw<br />
Uprising. She did not come<br />
back from the Soviet Union<br />
alone – she brought back her<br />
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Maria Nurowska<br />
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About:<br />
“If you want to describe me<br />
as a traitor, go ahead, and if<br />
you want to agree with the<br />
most dramatic decision I’ve<br />
ever made, I’ll be happy” said<br />
Ryszard Kukliński during<br />
a meeting in 1999. There was<br />
only one condition: the book<br />
could only be published after<br />
his death.<br />
Maria Nurowska listens<br />
carefully, asks questions and<br />
observes this short man,<br />
whose life has been more<br />
fascinating than literary<br />
fi ction. “Freedom fi ghter,”<br />
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Anna’s Choice by Maria<br />
Nurowska, a new edition of<br />
her novel Postscript from<br />
1989 is a deeply moving<br />
story told with great<br />
empathy. Anna Łazarska,<br />
a forty-year-old violinist,<br />
fi nds her father’s diary<br />
and discovers she is not<br />
the person she thought<br />
she was. Her real name is<br />
Miriam Zarg, and she was<br />
saved from the Warsaw<br />
as he was called by the<br />
Americans, liked to work at<br />
night. It was quiet then in<br />
general staff, and he could<br />
see farther and better in the<br />
dark. Sometimes he felt the<br />
true burden of responsibility,<br />
like when he realized that if<br />
the Russian Army invades<br />
the West, Poland will be the<br />
fi rst destination of NATO’s<br />
nuclear attack. That is why<br />
in 1972 he made an attempt<br />
to contact representatives<br />
of the American army<br />
and started cooperation<br />
with them several months<br />
later. To protect his wife,<br />
he transformed into<br />
a heartbreaker. He was<br />
deeply aware that women<br />
had always been the best<br />
alibis.<br />
ghetto as an infant. She is<br />
in shock. She loses trust in<br />
her father and abandons<br />
him, even though he is<br />
seriously ill and needs<br />
her care. Anna contacts<br />
her relatives, but cannot<br />
accept her new role. She<br />
painstakingly tries to put<br />
together her two lives. We<br />
learn her story from the<br />
journalist Hans Benek.<br />
Their meeting completes<br />
But before he started this<br />
dangerous game, crucial<br />
for the fate of his nation, he<br />
was an ordinary boy, who<br />
joined offi cers’ school, got<br />
an apartment in Wrocław<br />
so big that he could rollerstake<br />
in it, and fell in love<br />
with a skinny girl in a blue<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
Anna’s Choice<br />
the picture created by Maria<br />
Nurowska. Anna’s personal<br />
tragedy illustrates the fates<br />
of three nations entangled<br />
in World War Two: Jews,<br />
Poles, and Germans.<br />
FICTION<br />
Maria Nurowska<br />
My Friend the Traitor<br />
dress, who played out of<br />
tune piano.<br />
Kukliński tells also about<br />
his love for sailing, favourite<br />
quince vodka, dramatic<br />
escape from Poland,<br />
unusual war with mice, and<br />
the loss of two sons…<br />
Today, Kukliński is a monument. Some put fl owers in front<br />
of it, others turn their heads away. In a few years, his story<br />
will be taught at schools. But not many wonder who Ryszard<br />
Kukliński really was. Not whether he was a traitor or a hero,<br />
but who he was as a man. This is what Maria Nurowska’s<br />
book is about.<br />
Newsweek
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Miłosz. A biography by<br />
Andrzej Franaszek is not<br />
only a colourful portrait of<br />
one of the greatest authors<br />
of the 20th century, but also<br />
a historical account showing<br />
the brutal paroxysms of<br />
that time: wars, revolutions,<br />
totalitarianisms, uprisings,<br />
independence movements.<br />
The poet, who lived for<br />
almost hundred years,<br />
experienced all those<br />
events personally – as well<br />
as the fate of an exile, so<br />
characteristic of that time –<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
The event of the year of Czesław Miłosz!<br />
An exceptional life, an exceptional biography.<br />
About the author:<br />
Andrzej Franaszek (1971) – literary critic, editor in the<br />
culture section of Tygodnik Powszechny, graduate of Polish<br />
philology at the Jagiellonian University. He concentrates<br />
on the life and work of contemporary Polish writers.<br />
He published, among others, „Ciemne źródło. Esej<br />
o cierpieniu w twórczości Zbigniewa Herberta” (nominated<br />
to Nike literary prize in 1999, second edition: <strong>Znak</strong> 2008),<br />
„Przepustka z piekła. 44 szkice o literaturze i przygodach<br />
duszy” (<strong>Znak</strong> 2010) and fi rst and foremost the monumental<br />
biography of Czesław Miłosz.<br />
and he examined them<br />
thoroughly in his works,<br />
which surprise the reader<br />
with their range of artistic<br />
diversity.<br />
Andrzej Franaszek was<br />
collecting materials for<br />
the biography for almost<br />
ten years – in Poland and<br />
Lithuania, in France and<br />
the United States. He<br />
spoke with everyone who<br />
could contribute important<br />
information about Miłosz,<br />
he searched through<br />
the archives at Beinecke<br />
Library and Maisons-<br />
Laffi tte, he investigated<br />
the poet’s extensive<br />
correspondence. What is<br />
more, he used his material<br />
in an amazing manner – he<br />
does not overwhelm the<br />
reader with excess data, but<br />
rather he creates a portrait<br />
of the hero of his story<br />
in an effortless style. He<br />
does not avoid painful and<br />
diffi cult subjects, delicate<br />
personal matters, dramatic<br />
decisions and choices. He<br />
presents them tactfully<br />
Andrzej Franaszek<br />
Miłosz. A Biography<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
and with empathy, he helps<br />
the reader to learn the<br />
secrets of a fascinating life<br />
of a great man. Reading<br />
the work of Andrzej<br />
Franaszek, we gain hope<br />
that we may understand the<br />
phenomenon of Milosz’s<br />
talent, the intricacies of his<br />
personality – that we may<br />
understand what shaped<br />
his mind, imagination and<br />
poetic sensitivity.
Travels with Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
Thirteen Translators Tell Their Stories<br />
About the author:<br />
This book was supposed<br />
to be a surprise gift for<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński.<br />
Unfortunately, we did not<br />
complete it in time to<br />
show him.<br />
Travels with Ryszard<br />
Kapuściński are very<br />
personal stories told by<br />
his translators: Astrit<br />
Beqiraj from Tirana,<br />
Anders Bodegård from<br />
Stockholm, William<br />
Brand from the United<br />
States (who now lives<br />
in Poland), Klara<br />
Główczewska from New<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
About:<br />
Part two of Travels with<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
contains very personal<br />
accounts of Kapuściński<br />
by his translators. Among<br />
those who share their<br />
memories of the famous<br />
reporter who died two<br />
years ago are Ljubica Rosić<br />
and Biserka Rajčić from<br />
Belgrade, the Transatlantyk<br />
Prize winner Ksenia<br />
Starosielska from Moscow,<br />
the director of the Krakow<br />
York, Tapani Kärkkäinen<br />
from Helsinki, Blagovesta<br />
Lingorska from Sophia,<br />
Mihai Mitu from Bucharest,<br />
Katarzyna Mroczkowska-<br />
-Brand from Cracow, Agata<br />
Orzeszek from Barcelona,<br />
Véronique Patte from<br />
Paris, Martin Pollack from<br />
Vienna, Dušan Provaznik<br />
from Prague, and Vera<br />
Veridiani from Florence.<br />
For these thirteen<br />
individuals Kapuściński<br />
was not only their master,<br />
but also a person very dear<br />
to them.<br />
Travels with Ryszard Kapuściński,<br />
part 2.<br />
The Tales of Fourteen Translators<br />
offi ce of the Cervantes<br />
Institute Abel Murcia<br />
Soriano, the Canadian<br />
of Polish descent Diana<br />
Kuprel, Tomasz Barciński<br />
from Rio de Janeiro and<br />
the Spanish-Polish couple<br />
Anna Rubio and Jerzy<br />
Sławomirski who translate<br />
Kapuściński’s works into<br />
Catalan. What emerges<br />
from these memories is<br />
the portrait of not only<br />
an outstanding writer,<br />
intellectual and mentor, but<br />
also a dear friend, a man<br />
of uncommon warmth and<br />
kindness.<br />
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About:<br />
This book was born out of<br />
the editor’s keen interest<br />
in Ryszard Kapuściński’s<br />
writing and a desire to<br />
acquaint his readers with<br />
a considerable number of<br />
interviews published in both<br />
Polish and foreign press,<br />
which reveal more than his<br />
books do. Most importantly,<br />
what kind of person was<br />
Kapuściński? And how<br />
did he happen to turn his<br />
profession into a mission<br />
and a true passion.<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
presented Krystyna<br />
Strączek with over 1100<br />
pages of text encompassing<br />
About:<br />
A collection of Ryszard<br />
Kapuściński’s ruminations<br />
about globalization,<br />
history, and specifi c<br />
geographical regions:<br />
Africa, Latin America,<br />
Europe and Russia. The<br />
book’s selection of texts<br />
and arrangement of the<br />
chapters was approved<br />
by Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
himself. One can treat<br />
this text as a supplement<br />
to his fi rst-rate works of<br />
over a hundred interviews<br />
with Polish and foreign<br />
journalists. As she read<br />
through it, she realised<br />
that it was a priceless<br />
gem, since it included<br />
not only Kapuściński’s<br />
views upon the work of<br />
a correspondent, but also<br />
an extraordinary tale<br />
about himself, his passion<br />
for travelling, his unique<br />
method of writing, the<br />
necessity to risk one’s<br />
life for a good purpose.<br />
The interviews contain<br />
Kapuściński’s account of<br />
the loneliness and fear<br />
experienced by foreign<br />
reportage, or as a point<br />
of departure for weighing<br />
in on the richness of our<br />
multifaceted modern<br />
world.<br />
These texts show Ryszard<br />
Kapuściński as not only<br />
a reporter and writer, they<br />
demonstrate his bewildering<br />
professional knowledge (after<br />
all, he was educated as<br />
a historian) about the fate<br />
and culture of regions<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
A Reporter: Self-portrait<br />
correspondents, his<br />
views on the hardships<br />
of writing and the burden<br />
of fame. Out of all the<br />
material emerged a book<br />
of quotes divided into fi ve<br />
chapters devoted, among<br />
others, to Kapuściński’s<br />
travels, his writing process<br />
and the idiosyncrasies of<br />
contemporary media. Highly<br />
readable as a concise<br />
autobiography and a kind<br />
of guide for aspiring<br />
journalists, it may serve<br />
either as an introduction<br />
to Kapuściński’s writing<br />
or a most valuable new<br />
perspective on his work.<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński<br />
The Rapid Current of History.<br />
Writings on the 20th and 21st Centuries<br />
he visited. But it is not<br />
a mere show of erudition.<br />
Kapuściński calls on facts<br />
in oder to interpret them,<br />
to show historical and<br />
cultural parallels, and to<br />
prognosticate.<br />
(from Krystyna Strączek’s<br />
introduction)<br />
This book is illustrated with<br />
Kapuściński’s very own<br />
previously unpublished<br />
pictures.
Beata Nowacka,<br />
Zygmunt Ziątek<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński. A Writer’s Biography<br />
Authored by the literary<br />
scholars Beata Nowacka and<br />
Zygmunt Ziątek, researchers<br />
of Kapuściński’s work<br />
of many years’ standing,<br />
the book is a pioneering<br />
presentation of the great<br />
reporter’s oeuvre in its<br />
entirety.<br />
The creative biography of one<br />
of the 20th century’s preeminent<br />
reporters describes<br />
the development and<br />
transformations of his writing,<br />
and also tells the life story of<br />
the writer who often made<br />
himself the protagonist of his<br />
texts. Alongside the analyses<br />
of Kapuściński’s reportage,<br />
the authors provide the<br />
history behind every piece,<br />
as well as their reception in<br />
Poland and abroad.<br />
Full of hereto unknown<br />
facts and bits of information<br />
freshly unearthed from the<br />
archives, this book is an<br />
indispensable and unrivalled<br />
guide for all interested in<br />
Ryszard Kapuściński’s life<br />
and work.<br />
The authors on their book:<br />
“Our investigation of Ryszard<br />
Kapuściński’s work is not<br />
primarily motivated by<br />
interpretive accuracy. What<br />
we aimed to capture was<br />
the dynamics of his spiritual<br />
growth, his attempt at the<br />
reconstruction of his own<br />
biography in synch with the<br />
historical changes, his search<br />
for the compatibility of the<br />
new face of the world with<br />
his own identity. In one of our<br />
last tape-recorded interviews<br />
with him, the writer said:<br />
‘The reporter changes with<br />
the world. The trajectory of<br />
history is identical with that of<br />
a reporter’s life.’”<br />
Review excerpts:<br />
The impressive-looking<br />
volume Ryszard Kapuściński.<br />
A Writer’s Biography was<br />
many years in the making. The<br />
authors present the material<br />
collected in many unpublished<br />
interviews with Kapuściński.<br />
They relate the circumstances<br />
of the creation of his most<br />
important works, his travels<br />
near and far, his experience of<br />
war and his native Pińsk.<br />
– Bartosz Marzec,<br />
Rzeczpospolita<br />
The authors did an impressive<br />
work, getting to know more<br />
about Ryszard, his adventures<br />
and his successes than even<br />
he himself or his wife Alicja<br />
remembered. Every page<br />
of the book is full of facts;<br />
the evaluation of his works<br />
is almost always right, as<br />
is the evaluation of him as<br />
a person, of his beautiful and<br />
rich life. What’s more, the<br />
book is a panorama of the<br />
whole spectrum of political<br />
events both in Poland and<br />
abroad, which changed the<br />
world considerably in the last<br />
few decades … I learned some<br />
small details of Ryszard’s life<br />
which I hadn’t known before:<br />
for example, the fact that<br />
as a twelve-year-old he was<br />
an altar boy… and where? In<br />
general Berling’s army! I was<br />
friends with Ryszard for many<br />
years and he never told me<br />
that.<br />
– Wojciech Giełżyński,<br />
Nowe Książki<br />
... in short: a guide to his<br />
writing.<br />
– Justyna Sobolewska,<br />
Polityka<br />
The most comprehensive and<br />
the most detailed of Ryszard<br />
Kapuściński’s biographies to<br />
date.<br />
– Wprost<br />
... a splendid biography<br />
showing the complicated life<br />
story of a writer, a reporter,<br />
a man.<br />
– Nowa Trybuna Opolska<br />
The scope of the work and its<br />
interpretive accuracy are truly<br />
impressive, as is the utterly<br />
satisfi ed ambition to “capture<br />
the dynamics of Kapuściński’s<br />
spiritual growth.”<br />
– Przegląd Polski<br />
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About:<br />
This book aims to draw<br />
attention to issues relating<br />
to illness and pain, which<br />
almost inevitably most of<br />
us will be obliged to face<br />
at some time in our lives.<br />
It discusses the art of<br />
medi cine and goes back<br />
to the Platonic notion of<br />
anamnesis; it de scribes<br />
how “constellations” of<br />
symptoms, refl ecting the<br />
position of the patient,<br />
come to form the diagnosis.<br />
It also talks about the gift of<br />
prognosis, which invariably<br />
evokes admiration among<br />
laymen. The author tells us<br />
how helpless a doctor can<br />
be and how he sometimes<br />
has to grope in the dark for<br />
an answer. Time and again<br />
he re fers us to music and<br />
poetry, which he justifi es by<br />
stating that medicine and<br />
art spring from the same<br />
source, i.e. magic.<br />
The book does not attempt<br />
to boast about progress in<br />
medical science, although<br />
Andrzej Szczeklik<br />
Catharsis<br />
it does mention some<br />
of the most out standing<br />
achievements in this fi eld.<br />
The author de scribes<br />
dis cov eries in which he<br />
participated or which he<br />
wit nessed, touches upon<br />
the decline in medical<br />
ethics and tries to vi sua lise<br />
the future of medicine<br />
following the “de coding”<br />
of the human genome sequence.<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
I once wrote a line in a poem that went: “I prefer talking to<br />
doctors about something else...” In those days I didn’t know<br />
Doctor Andrzej Szczeklik personally, or his book, as it hadn’t<br />
come into existence yet. Now that I’ve read it, I’m convinced<br />
that Doctor Szczeklik is not only capable of talking “about<br />
something else”, but also of talking “about THIS”, and he can<br />
do it beautifully and fascinatingly.<br />
Wisława Szymborska<br />
Catharsis is a masterful restoration of the old etymological<br />
links that exist between what is hale and healthy and holy.<br />
Andrzej Szczeklik is professor of medicine, but he is also<br />
expert in “the science of the feelings”, which was how William<br />
Wordsworth defi ned poetry. His book is erudite, imaginative,<br />
intimate, authoritative; at once a reverie about the roots<br />
and responsibilities of doctoring, and a timely reminder that<br />
health care involves caritas before it involves the economy.<br />
Seamus Heaney
Andrzej Szczeklik<br />
Kore<br />
About the author:<br />
Professor An drzej Szczeklik was born in Krakow on<br />
29 July, 1938. He graduated from the Medical Faculty<br />
of the Krakow Academy of Medicine, and con tin ued his<br />
education in the USA and Swe den. Now he is Head of<br />
the 2nd Internal Diseases Department of the Collegium<br />
Medicum at the Jagiello nian University. From 1990 to<br />
1993 he was Rector of the Krakow Acad emy of Medi cine;<br />
and from 1993 to 1996 Deputy Rector of the Jagiellonian<br />
University in charge of the Collegium Medi cum. Since 1995<br />
he has held the post of Na tional Consultant for Internal<br />
Dis eases.<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
About:<br />
This is the second book of Professor Andrzej Szczeklik,<br />
the author of Catharsis. The author describes the greatest<br />
achievements of medicine, both historic and recent. He<br />
ponders over what it means to be a physician, what is the<br />
core of this fi eld of science, and tries to fi nd its soul. The<br />
book is full of erudite references to literature, philosophy,<br />
history and arts.<br />
Kore in Greek means ‘girl’, but also ‘pupil’. The Greeks<br />
used to say that you can see your soul in the shape of<br />
a tiny girl through the pupil of your eye. How could they<br />
have known that the pupil is the only window to the<br />
brain? Where is the soul today? What does medicine tell<br />
us about the soul? Is medicine looking for soul in itself?<br />
Somewhere between life and death, health and illness,<br />
science and art, and fi nalny – love. Let her lead the way on<br />
our serach for soul. The soul of medicine.<br />
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About the author:<br />
About:<br />
Małgorzata Szejnert<br />
The Black Garden<br />
Małgorzata Szejnert is an acclaimed journalist. For several<br />
years she worked for the Gazeta Wyborcza where she<br />
published many reportages and interviews.<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
Awarded the Cogito Literary Prize this outstanding book<br />
of reportage shows the history of the Silesia region where<br />
both Polish and German history was shaped. Małgorzata<br />
Szejnert reconstructs the extraordinary history of that<br />
region through the stories of families form a town called<br />
Giszowiec. These individual stories are truly fascinating<br />
and can function as excellent background for novels or<br />
scenarios. Szejnert shows the confl ict of identity that<br />
took place on a level as small as the family, as it often<br />
happened that one brother was a Polish patriot while the<br />
other was a German army offi cer. Szejnert portrays people<br />
who overcame the limitations of history and community.<br />
They fought stereotypes, their own weaknesses and they<br />
often won this battle.<br />
Shortlisted for the Nike Literary Prize in 2008.
Małgorzata Szejnert<br />
Gateway Island<br />
Małgorzata Szejnert, an outstanding journalist, head of the<br />
reportage department at the Polish biggest daily, Gazeta<br />
Wyborcza, the author of Czarny ogród (Black Garden), the<br />
book honoured with the Polish Public Media Cogito Prize<br />
in 2008, has now turned her attention to Ellis Island. The<br />
tiny scrap of land just off the coast near New York City<br />
has long been called the “gateway to America.” Since late<br />
19 th century to the 1950s it was where all immigrants to<br />
the United States from all over the world arrived, in total<br />
nearly twelve million people.<br />
The majority spent just a few hours there. The less<br />
fortunate ones, however, could be detained for over<br />
a year, undergoing tedious procedures. Others still were<br />
simply turned away, because, according to Immigration<br />
Law, entrance could be denied to “idiots, the mentally<br />
ill, the destitute, polygamists, people who could become<br />
a public burden, who suffer from repulsive or dangerous<br />
contagious diseases, who were convicted for crimes or<br />
other disgraceful deeds, or committed acts of immorality,”<br />
as well as to all those who simply could not afford to travel<br />
inland.<br />
Enormously insightful, the author recreates the dramatic<br />
lives of the immigrants, both Polish, Jewish, German,<br />
Irish and Italian; she accompanies them under the decks<br />
of overloaded ships, during lenghty quarantines and all<br />
sorts of medical examinations, and describes their lot<br />
after entering America. Her main focus, however, are the<br />
employees of the Immigration Offi ce: the doctors, nurses,<br />
interpreters and social workers, or even chaperons who<br />
guarded the chastity of young girls. Szejnert tells the<br />
story of the Island up to the present day; today it hosts the<br />
Immigration Museum, with most of the staff descending<br />
from the immigrants who arrived on Ellis Island.<br />
The book is richly illustrated with unique archive<br />
photographs.<br />
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NON-FICTION<br />
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This is a humbling and<br />
heartrending story of<br />
courage and tenacity, told<br />
self-effacingly and simply. (...)<br />
A testament to our capacity<br />
for evil and for transcending<br />
it, this is a lesson to us all.<br />
The Times<br />
Es gibt Literatur und es<br />
gibt das Leben. Und dann<br />
gibt es den Glücksfall. Ein<br />
Leben, das sich wie Literatur<br />
liest. So einer ist Karolina<br />
Lanckorońskas Erinnerungen<br />
an den Krieg. Die polnische<br />
Gräfi n, die kürzlich in Rom<br />
verstarb, kann man mit<br />
About the author:<br />
Praise for Those Who Trepass Against Us:<br />
Pro fessor Karo lina<br />
Lanckorońska was the last<br />
mem ber of the fa mous<br />
Lancko roński family from<br />
Brzezie. Born in 1898, she<br />
lived through the whole<br />
20 th cen tury and wit nessed<br />
as well as par tici pated in<br />
many im por tant his torical<br />
events. In 1994 she do nated<br />
the great Lanckoroński<br />
fami ly collection of<br />
paintings to the Polish<br />
nation. The artistic and<br />
his torical value of the<br />
collection is enormous<br />
bestem Gewissen unter die<br />
legendären Frauen des 20.<br />
Jahrhunderts einreihen. (...)<br />
Spätestens seit Imre Kertész<br />
in seinem Roman eines<br />
Schicksalslosen eine neue<br />
Sicht auf den Holocaust<br />
zauberte, wurde es klar, dass<br />
unter all den Gräueln ein<br />
Wunder verschüttet lag, das<br />
niemand bislang bemerkte.<br />
Das Wunder des Überlebens.<br />
In Karolina Lanckorońskas<br />
Kriegserinnerungen, die<br />
mit der Einnahme Lwows<br />
durch die Rote Armee<br />
1939 einsetzen und bis zu<br />
Lanckorońskas Befreiung<br />
aus dem Konzentrationslager<br />
Karolina Lanckorońska<br />
and the gift is one of<br />
unprecedented gener osity.<br />
Af ter World War II, Karo lina<br />
Lancko rońska decided to<br />
settle in Rome and de voted<br />
her time to the study of art<br />
history, es pe cially to the<br />
work of her beloved artist<br />
Mich elan gelo. Her sense of<br />
duty to wards Polish cul ture<br />
in duced her to the work<br />
for the Polish Historical<br />
In sti tute and since 1967 in<br />
the Lanckoroński family<br />
foun dation. She died on<br />
25 August, 2002.<br />
Ravensbrück 1945 reichen, ist<br />
dieses Wunder wieder da. (...)<br />
Albert Camus sagte<br />
einmal, dass ein Mensch<br />
niemals einen anderen<br />
töten dürfe, weil es gegen<br />
die fundamentalste Regel<br />
unserer Existenz verstoße –<br />
der Loyalität der Lebenden<br />
gegenüber dem Tod. Alber<br />
Camus wäre entzückt,<br />
eine so stark ausgeprägte<br />
Loyalität in der Person<br />
Karolina Lanckorońskas zu<br />
sehen.<br />
Der Standard Album
Karolina Lanckorońska<br />
Those Who Trespass Against Us<br />
About:<br />
Born in Buchberg, Austria, in 1898, Countess Karolina<br />
Lanckorońska was an aristocrat and art historian who<br />
taught at the University of Lwów, then part of Poland. When<br />
the Soviets came to occupy Lwów, Lanckorońska became<br />
active in the Polish resistance and moved to Kraków.<br />
She was arrested by the Germans in Kołomyja in 1942,<br />
imprisoned and later sentenced to death; incarcerated<br />
fi rst in Stanisławów, then in Lwów and Berlin before being<br />
placed in the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp.<br />
As a countess, Lanckorońska was subjected to varying<br />
treatment, suffering near starvation at times only to<br />
receive extra food and medical care at others according<br />
to the fl uctuating and often confl icting orders from the<br />
authorities in Berlin. With the intervention of some<br />
infl uential friends and the honourable actions of one<br />
Nazi, she was saved from death on several occasions.<br />
Thanks to efforts by the Swiss diplomat, scholar and<br />
International Red Cross President Carl J. Burkhardt<br />
(whose correspondence with Heinrich Himmler was found<br />
among Lanckorońska’s personal belongings) she was<br />
fi nally released in April, 1945.<br />
Throughout her imprisonment, Lanckorońska remained<br />
defi antly resilient, loyal to Poland and committed to her<br />
fellow prisoners, including women used by Nazi doctors<br />
as guinea pigs for shocking medical experiments. Her<br />
magnetic personality and superb story-telling makes this<br />
a powerful narrative and sustains our interest through<br />
harrowing reading. Her ability to view her own horrifi c<br />
situation with objectivity gives us insight into the motives<br />
and behaviour of the Soviets and the Germans not<br />
simply as oppressors, but as human beings. Hers is an<br />
extraordinary story of courage and will.<br />
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Pimlico)<br />
US (Perseus)<br />
Brasil (Tessitura Editore)<br />
Spain (Acantilado)<br />
Egypt (Sphinx Agency)<br />
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41<br />
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World<br />
42<br />
The life story of „Rysiek”<br />
(Stanisław Aronson’s code<br />
name) is so extraordinary as<br />
to seem almost impossible.<br />
He survived the ghetto<br />
and fought valiantly in the<br />
Warsaw Uprising. He served<br />
as a soldier both in the Polish<br />
army under general Anders,<br />
and the Israel Defense<br />
Forces. These unique<br />
experiences make him an<br />
authority fi gure. If you want<br />
to learn the complicated truth<br />
about Polish-Jewish history,<br />
this book is a must-read.<br />
Norman Davies<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
About the authors:<br />
Patrycja Bukalska (born<br />
1972) is a journalist<br />
regularly contributing to<br />
the Tygodnik Powszechny<br />
weekly. Her texts have also<br />
been published by Więź<br />
and the Polish editions of<br />
Newsweek and National<br />
Geographic. She did<br />
volunteering work at the<br />
Oral History Archive, as well<br />
as a guide at the Warsaw<br />
Uprising Museum. What she<br />
likes best about her work is<br />
listening to real life stories.<br />
She lives in Warsaw with<br />
„Rysiek is in Warsaw! You<br />
must go and see him. He’s<br />
staying at Bristol”.<br />
Danuta’s voice over the<br />
phone was clearly excited and<br />
the matter seemed urgent.<br />
But who was Rysiek? And<br />
why did she think I should<br />
see him?<br />
That is how Patrycja<br />
Bukowska begins her book.<br />
A few words exchanged<br />
on the phone led to her<br />
meeting Stanisław Aronson,<br />
“Rysiek”, a character that<br />
defi es stereotypes.<br />
History gave him a good<br />
tumble. He spent his<br />
her husband, two sons and<br />
two dogs.<br />
Stanisław Aronson was<br />
born in a Jewish family in<br />
Warsaw on May 6, 1925.<br />
Before World War II he lived<br />
in Łódź. Having escaped<br />
from the train from the<br />
Warsaw ghetto to the Nazi<br />
concentration camp in<br />
Treblinka, he joined the<br />
Home Army in Warsaw in<br />
January 1943 and became a<br />
soldier of “Andrzej’s Group”.<br />
He was severely wounded<br />
in the Warsaw Uprising of<br />
1944. After fl eeing Poland<br />
childhood in Łodź and the<br />
Soviet occupation in Lvov.<br />
He escaped from the train<br />
heading to the Nazi camp in<br />
Treblinka to fi ght in an elite<br />
detachment of the Polish<br />
Home Army. After the war<br />
he left Poland, fearing<br />
prosecution from the NKVD,<br />
the Russian secret police.<br />
Today, when Poland is free,<br />
he is rediscovering the<br />
lost land of his youth and<br />
working on the preservation<br />
of the memory of his<br />
brothers in arms.<br />
The juxtaposition of the<br />
author’s vivid narrative and<br />
Patrycja Bukalska<br />
and Stanisław Aronson<br />
Years of Turmoil<br />
in June 1945, he served<br />
in the 2 nd Polish corps<br />
stationed in Italy. In 1947<br />
he emigrated to Palestine<br />
and took part in Israel’s<br />
War of Independence,<br />
and in all subsequent<br />
wars fought by Israel<br />
until the Lebanese War.<br />
Married, with<br />
a daughter, a son and<br />
two grandchildren, he<br />
lives in Israel. He is the<br />
recipient of a staggering<br />
number of honours as an<br />
outstanding soldier, some<br />
bestowed twice, both in<br />
Poland and in Israel.<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
the sober voice of Aronson<br />
himself results in a unique<br />
portrayal of “Rysiek”. And<br />
can you think of a more<br />
exciting adventure than<br />
getting to know someone<br />
who says, “I really don’t<br />
know who I am, every time<br />
I think about it I seem to be<br />
a different person”?
Fr. Michał Heller<br />
The Philosophy of Nature: A Historical Sketch<br />
About the author:<br />
Fr. Michał Heller (b. 1936)<br />
is a philosopher, theologian,<br />
professor in the Philosophy<br />
Department at the<br />
Pontifi cal Academy of<br />
Theology (PAT) in Krakow<br />
(Poland), doctor honoris<br />
causa of the Academy of<br />
Mining and Metallurgy<br />
in Krakow, ordinary<br />
member of the Pontifi cal<br />
Academy of Sciences and<br />
the Petersburg Academy<br />
of Sciences, and also<br />
an associate member of<br />
NON-FICTION<br />
About:<br />
Fr. Heller’s The Philosophy<br />
of Nature is a new and<br />
considerably expanded<br />
edition of the popular The<br />
Philosophy of the World<br />
published by <strong>Znak</strong> in<br />
1992. The author gives<br />
an overview of the most<br />
important systems of<br />
nature in the history of<br />
European thinking, starting<br />
with the cosmology of Plato<br />
and ending with the Open<br />
Universe of Karl Popper,<br />
he presents a critical<br />
presentation of the methods<br />
used by contemporary<br />
the Vatican Astronomical<br />
Observatory. He has<br />
written about the following<br />
philosophical problems:<br />
physics of relativity, the<br />
philosophy of science, and<br />
the relationship between<br />
science and theology. His<br />
publications include The<br />
Evolution of the Cosmos and<br />
Cosmology (1983, 1985),<br />
The Theoretical Foundations<br />
of Cosmology (1988), The<br />
Physics of Movement and<br />
Space-time (1993), Time and<br />
philosophies of nature, and<br />
discusses philosophical<br />
controversies centered<br />
around the discoveries of<br />
20th century physics: the<br />
theory of relativity, quantum<br />
mechanics, and the unifi ed<br />
theory. The Philosophy<br />
of Nature is a fascinating<br />
and indispensable source<br />
of knowledge for both<br />
scientists interested<br />
in philosophy and<br />
philosophers analysing<br />
the relationship between<br />
philosophy and physics.<br />
Causality (2002). He is also<br />
the author of many popular<br />
introductions to the issues<br />
of the philosophy of nature,<br />
among them, Toward the<br />
Universe (1970), The Cosmic<br />
Adventure of the Wise Man<br />
(1994), Joy in Banach’s<br />
Spaces (1995), To Capture<br />
Becoming (1996).<br />
In March 2008 Fr. Heller<br />
was awarded the Templeton<br />
Prize.<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Germany (Springer)<br />
ENGLISH TRANSLATION<br />
AVAILABLE<br />
43<br />
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Children’s<br />
44<br />
books<br />
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Przemysław Wechterowicz,<br />
Marta Ignerska<br />
Great Dreams<br />
About the authors:<br />
Przemysław Wechterowicz says the following about his<br />
life: “My life would be boring and dull without children’s<br />
books – they add a cheerful glow to everything”. He lives<br />
in Warsaw. This is his fi rst book.<br />
Marta Ignerska (b. 1978) is a graduate of the Department<br />
of Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw<br />
(cum laude, 2005). Her work centers around illustrating,<br />
designing books, graphics, and she works with, among<br />
others, periodicals and publishers (<strong>Znak</strong>, Wytwórnia),<br />
TVP (Polish National Television), and is the graphic designer<br />
for the publisher of the National Gallery of Art, Zachęta.<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
About:<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Brazil (Editora Biruta)<br />
France (Global Arts)<br />
45<br />
A very big book about very big dreams. It contains twenty<br />
one illustrations, each presenting a captivating, colourful<br />
and imaginative realization of a sometimes surprising<br />
wish. The Carpet wants to fl y to Mars, Fire dreams about<br />
becoming a fi refi ghter, and the Well – about seeing the<br />
ocean. The original and humorous text by Wechterowicz<br />
has become an inspiration for Marta Ignerska’s vibrant<br />
illustrations, full of details and telling a narrative of their<br />
own.<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
France (Rue du monde)<br />
Spain (Zorro rojo)<br />
Korea (Borim Press)<br />
46<br />
About:<br />
Two very young and very imaginative artists found a very<br />
funny and original way to present how the food chain<br />
works in nature – starting from plants, to predators, and<br />
the animals feeding on dead organisms. The core of the<br />
book are black and white illustrations, which in a subtle<br />
way introduce the educational element and are easily<br />
grasped by children.<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com<br />
About the authors:<br />
Aleksandra Mizielińska,<br />
Daniel Mizieliński<br />
Who Eats Whom<br />
Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński graduated<br />
from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Graphic Design<br />
Dept.) in 2007. In 2008 they were awarded the Book of the<br />
Year (IBBY POLAND) for their D.O.M.E.K.<br />
CHILDREN’S
Andrzej Maleszka<br />
Magic Tree. Tale 1. The Red Chair<br />
About the author:<br />
Andrzej Maleszka, fi lm director and the author of the<br />
Emmy-awarded script for the TV series for children The<br />
Magic Tree. The series received numerous prestigious<br />
awards including the EMMY AWARD (2007). It was shown<br />
in many countries throughout Europe including Germany,<br />
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and France, as well as<br />
around the world (Japan, Brazil, South Korea). Maleszka<br />
was a director of a feature fi lm The Magic Tree. Tale 1. The<br />
Red Chair, which premiered in autumn 2009.<br />
Maleszka is also the author of the script-based novel<br />
under the same title.<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
About:<br />
It is a well-told, modern<br />
story of three Polish<br />
children who have to<br />
overcome many obstacles in<br />
order to win back to the love<br />
of their parents, engrossed<br />
by earning money. The<br />
world of Kuki, Tosia and<br />
Filip is strongly infl uenced<br />
by the magical world in the<br />
form of the red chair, made<br />
of the Magic Tree, endowed<br />
with many unusual powers.<br />
Thrilling and fast-paced, the<br />
book is a true page-turner.<br />
Book of the Year 2009 (IBBY<br />
POLAND)<br />
Excerpt:<br />
In May 2000 there was a terrible<br />
thunderstorm over the Warta<br />
valley. It lasted three days and<br />
three nights. Petrifi ed animals<br />
hid in the deepest burrows.<br />
Little children kept pillows over<br />
their heads so as not to hear<br />
the deafening roar of thunder.<br />
Electricity was cut off and the<br />
roofs swept off many houses by<br />
the howling wind.<br />
On the third day a lightning<br />
struck an enormous old oak<br />
tree on the hill. The tree split<br />
in half and collapsed.<br />
A tremor went through all the<br />
houses in the valley and the<br />
thunderstorm immediately<br />
stopped. No one knew then<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Korea (Book Light)<br />
Serbia (Pro Polis Plus)<br />
47<br />
that it was no ordinary oak<br />
tree, but the Magic Tree.<br />
It had great and wonderful<br />
powers.<br />
It was hauled to the sawmill<br />
and sawed into long boards.<br />
A hundred objects were then<br />
made of its wood, and each<br />
retained a little bit of the<br />
Magic Tree’s power. Everyday<br />
things now had power the<br />
like of which the world had<br />
never known before.<br />
The objects were shipped to<br />
shops in various parts of<br />
the world and from that day<br />
on uncanny things began to<br />
happen.<br />
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Korea (Book Light)<br />
48<br />
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Andrzej Maleszka<br />
Magic Tree. Tale 2. The Mystery of a Bridge<br />
About the author:<br />
Andrzej Maleszka, fi lm director and the author of the<br />
Emmy-awarded script for the TV series for children The<br />
Magic Tree. The series received numerous prestigious<br />
awards including the EMMY AWARD (2007). It was shown<br />
in many countries throughout Europe including Germany,<br />
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and France, as well as<br />
around the world (Japan, Brazil, South Korea). Maleszka<br />
was a director of a feature fi lm The Magic Tree. Tale 1. The<br />
Red Chair, which premiered in autumn 2009.<br />
Maleszka is also the author of the script-based novel<br />
under the same title.<br />
About:<br />
Kuki, Vicky and Melania<br />
must fi nd the Forgetting<br />
Bridge. They have to<br />
confront a great spider,<br />
an underground river and<br />
the dangerous three-eyed<br />
Greta. They have to save<br />
Filip, who infl uenced by<br />
magic fell in love with the<br />
wrong girl. Fortunately<br />
they get help form the best<br />
robot in the world, a geniu<br />
dog and Latte who is a truly<br />
wonderful cat.<br />
CHILDREN’S
About the author:<br />
Michał Rusinek (b.<br />
1972) is a writer and<br />
translator. Teaches<br />
theory of literature at the<br />
Jagiellonian University<br />
and is the secretary of the<br />
Nobel prize-winning poet<br />
Wisława Szymborska. He<br />
translated many children’s<br />
books, including Peter<br />
About:<br />
Little Chopin is the fi rst<br />
Polish picture book about<br />
the life of the one of the<br />
greatest composers of all<br />
times. Funny and at the<br />
same time informative, it<br />
explains how “little Freddy”<br />
became a composer and<br />
humorously describes some<br />
of his most famous works.<br />
The text is accompanied<br />
by vibrant colourful<br />
illustrations by Joanna<br />
Rusinek.<br />
Michał Rusinek<br />
Little Chopin<br />
Pan and Wendy by J.M.<br />
Barrie, Paddington Here<br />
and Now by Michael Bond<br />
and The Peanuts. He writes<br />
poetry for both adults and<br />
children, and is the author<br />
of the highly successful Do<br />
It, Swear. A Guidebook to<br />
Children’s Swearwords.<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
Little Chopin has already<br />
been translated into ten<br />
languages as a part of the<br />
cultural program of the<br />
Polish Ministry of Foreign<br />
Affairs, and is one of the<br />
most important publications<br />
prepared for 2010 – the<br />
year of Frederic Chopin<br />
commemorating the 200 th<br />
anniversary of his birth.<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Polish Institute Tallin<br />
Polish Institute Jerusalem<br />
Polish Institute Villnus<br />
49<br />
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50<br />
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About the author:<br />
About:<br />
Joanna Olech<br />
Pompom’s Children<br />
Educated as a graphic designer, Joanna Olech has done<br />
numerous illustrations for children’s books, and is the<br />
laureate of several awards. Her literary debut, Dynastia<br />
Miziołków (The Miziolek Dynasty, 1994), is a realistic and<br />
very funny series of tales for ten to twelve year-olds. Her<br />
second literary effort is Gdzie diabeł mówi do usług (Where<br />
the Devil Speaks: At Your Service!, 1997).<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
The famous dragon named Pompon who appeared in<br />
the Fis family through the sink drain married a pretty<br />
dragoness and has two children. It is a girl and a boy,<br />
Prudencja and Pulpet. They go to a normal school with the<br />
humans and are very smart students. They make friends<br />
with children and love to go to Halloween parties since<br />
their costumes are perfect. Together with their human<br />
friends they travel to Transylvania to fi nd their relatives.<br />
The journey is full of unusual adventures and funny events.
Joanna Olech<br />
Pompom the Sink Dragon<br />
About the author:<br />
Educated as a graphic designer, Joanna Olech has done<br />
numerous illustrations for children’s books, and is the<br />
laureate of several awards. Her literary debut, Dynastia<br />
Miziołków (The Miziolek Dynasty, 1994), is a realistic and<br />
very funny series of tales for ten to twelve year-olds. Her<br />
second literary effort is Gdzie diabeł mówi do usług (Where<br />
the Devil Speaks: At Your Service!, 1997).<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
About:<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
Slovakia (Slovart)<br />
France (Flammarion)<br />
51<br />
Pompom the Sink Dragon is a very relevant history of<br />
a certain dragon. This dragon, named Pompom, appears<br />
in the Fis family home through their sink drain and stays<br />
with them. He grows quickly and matures intellectually.<br />
He becomes a talkative and audacious dragon with<br />
creative, yet sometimes dangerous, ideas which he<br />
puts into practice. He is the caretaker of Mr. and Mrs.<br />
Fis’ children, Malwina and Gniewosz, who once even<br />
took him to activities at an ecology school. This book is<br />
recommended for children from six to ten years of age.<br />
It is humorous in tenor, at the same time it makes great<br />
observations about family life and on top of that it is<br />
a satire of modern life. Joanna Olech is the author of the<br />
illustrations as well.<br />
http://www.znak-rights.com
About the authors:<br />
Marcin Brykczyński (b. 1946)<br />
was educated in economics,<br />
for many years he was<br />
associated with propagating<br />
native culture as an assitant<br />
to Ludwig Zimmerer, which,<br />
as he underscores, was an<br />
important life-experience.<br />
52<br />
RIGHTS SOLD:<br />
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Japan (RIC Publications)<br />
UK (WingedChariot<br />
Press)<br />
Brazil (Editora Biruta)<br />
ENGLISH EDITION<br />
AVAILABLE<br />
FRENCH EDITION<br />
AVAILABLE<br />
Marta Ignerska (b. 1978)<br />
is a graduate of the<br />
Department of Graphic<br />
Design at the Academy of<br />
Fine Arts in Warsaw (cum<br />
laude, 2005). Her work<br />
centers around illustrating,<br />
designing books, graphics,<br />
and she works with,<br />
among others, periodicals<br />
Marcin Brykczyński<br />
Marta Ignerska<br />
Joanna Olech<br />
The Pink Piglet<br />
and publishers (<strong>Znak</strong>,<br />
Wytwórnia), TVP (Polish<br />
National Television), and is<br />
the graphic designer for the<br />
publisher of the National<br />
Gallery of Art, Zachęta.<br />
Educated as a graphic<br />
designer, Joanna Olech has<br />
done numerous illustrations<br />
About:<br />
for children’s books, and<br />
is the laureate of several<br />
awards. Her literary debut,<br />
Dynastia Miziołków (The<br />
Miziolek Dynasty, 1994), is<br />
a realistic and very funny<br />
series of tales for ten to<br />
twelve year-olds.<br />
CHILDREN’S<br />
This simply incredible children’s tale tells the story<br />
of a Piglet, who does not accept himself as he is, and<br />
desperately wants to try being someone else. And so the<br />
Piglet takes a walk and asks the animals he meets for<br />
advice.<br />
Through its narrative The Pink Piglet demonstrates the<br />
value of friendship and helps each reader discover beauty<br />
within themselves.<br />
It is also an artistic book, with an unconventional set of<br />
illustrations by Marta Ignerska and Joanna Olech. This<br />
makes it a unique book on the Polish book market. The<br />
book’s author, Marcin Brykczyński, is a known translator<br />
and a distinguished author of children’s books.<br />
Marta Ignerska, for her illustrations and layout, and<br />
Joanna Olech, for her illustrations, both received<br />
honorable mentions in the IBBY competition for “2006<br />
Book of the Year.”
Notes<br />
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Notes