Today, Olga Tokarczuk receives the prestigious Usedomer Literaturpreis 2012 for her literary output, especially for the literary and intellectual restitution of Lower Silesia in the European historical experience and in the Polish language.
This is the second edition of the prize, the first laureate in 2011 was the Czech writer Radka Denemarková.
Read MoreThe longlist for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award was announced on Monday. It includes three books represented by Polishrights:
Congratulations to the authors and the publisher, Czarne!
Read MoreThe Polityka Passport 2011 was awarded to Mikołaj Łoziński for his book The Book, for ‘a superbly told small story set against big history. For its original form and for showing that there is no better literary theme than family.’
The Polityka Passport is one of the three most important literary prizes in Poland. It has been established in 1993 by the Polityka weekly. Previous laureates include Jacek Dehnel, Sylwia Chutnik, Michał Witkowski, Paweł Huelle, Dorota Masłowska, Wojciech Kuczok, Jerzy Pilch, Andrzej Sapkowski, Olga Tokarczuk, Stefan Chwin, et.al.
http://www.polityka.pl/paszportypolityki/laureaci2011/1523425.read
Read MoreOlga’s story “Preserves for Life” has just been posted on Granta’s website accompanying the publication of the Granta Horror Issue. You can read the story following this link:
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Preserves-for-Life
Read MoreThis month, Portobello published the UK edition of White Fever by Jacek Hugo-Bader. The book has already been reviewed by the Guardian, the Spectator and Financial Times.
Hugo-Bader is a sympathetic companion, and he offers a compelling portrait of a society in moral and social breakdown.
[Guardian]
Clear-eyed and curious, Hugo-Bader offers a riveting tour of this benighted land.
[Financial Times]
Hugo-Bader is an excellent and intrepid reporter.
[Spectator]
It is my pleasure to inform you that 7 out of 20 books on the NIKE longlist announced last week are titles published by Czarne Publishing House and represented by my agency:
PROSE:
Andrzej Stasiuk – DZIENNIK PISANY PÓŹNIEJ (rights sold to Germany)
Justyna Bargielska – OBSOLETKI (World rights free). This title is also longlisted for the Gdynia Literary Prize 2011.
LITERARY REPORTAGE:
Mariusz Szczygieł – ZRÓB SOBIE RAJ (rights sold to Czech Republic, France, Italy, Ukraine, Hungary)
Witold Szabłowski – ZABÓJCA Z MIASTA MORELI (rights sold to Ukraine)
Wojciech Górecki – TOAST ZA PRZODKÓW (World rights available)
ESSAY:
Wojciech Nowicki – DNO OKA (World rights available)
Dariusz Czaja – GDZIEŚ DALEJ, GDZIE INDZIEJ (World rights available)
A Nike Award–winning author travels through Eastern Europe, a place littered with the crumbling relics of communism, with inhabitants abandoned and seemingly frozen in time waiting for their future to begin. Eschewing major European cities, Stasiuk (Fado, 2009, etc.) traveled east from his native Poland into the nearly deserted yet captivating landscapes of places off the usual tourist route, including Transylvania, Moldova, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine and Albania. Translated from Polish, the spellbinding language captures the author’s piercing insights with painful clarity; Stasiuk refuses to soften what he sees, hears and smells, providing a dynamic postcard of his travels. Readers will be rapidly ensnared by his recounting of a curiously exotic and complex region of the world—villages where, “[i]f you took away the cars, everything would be as it was a hundred year ago,” where “monotony suggests eternity.” Peppered with haunting landscapes, the terrain contains a history of brutal wars and rapacious dictators. Driving through Slovenia, the author came across a dark valley, the largest unmarked cemetery in a country where “in the summer of 1945, Tito’s Communists murdered in this place, without a trial or witnesses, prisoners who had been handed over to them by armies of the Allies.” In Albania, the author encountered a nation lacking the resources to melt down the 600,000 bunkers built between 1944 and 1985, during the regime of Enver Hoxha. “When the highway turned toward Tirana, the bunkers began,” he writes. “Gray concrete skulls, jutting a meter above the ground, gazed with eyes that were black vertical slits. They looked like corpses buried standing.” Whether writing about gypsies, the ancient bond between beasts and humans or the threadbare currency of Moldova, Stasiuk’s language and sharp observations reveal a discerning intellect. A mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed trek through a little-visited region of the world.
Read MoreYou’ve surely noticed the 6-month silence and lack of updates here at polishrights. This was due to my maternity leave. Back to work, I am pleased to present the LBF 2011 rights guide with new exciting authors I have taken on since last year. Enjoy and see you in London!
Read MoreFilm rights to GOTTLAND by Mariusz Szczygieł have been optioned by a Czech production company.
Read More