This local club is for readers who would like to discuss Polish literature in English.

The book for the meeting is My First Suicide / Moje pierwsze samobojstwo by Jerzy Pilch, first published in 2006. The book, is a set of ten stories distinct but sometimes connected through common characters from the author’s past. This is a prose highlighting his background, nostalgic of the past and self-reflecting.

Jerzy Pilch (1952-2020) is one of the best known Polish novelists and essayists, he was also a playwright and screenwriter. As a writer, he won the top Polish literary award, the Nike, in 2001 for The Mighty Angel / Pod Mocnym Aniołem, and also published in the best Polish weekly magazines. He was a Protestant in the Catholic Poland, and he drew on this background all the time; this gave him both strength of convictions that something is wrong not with him but with the society marred by different communist regimes and a healthy distance to the mainstream society mores and customs. The effect was a unique witty style with plenty of ironic and merciless slashing of various nonsense balloons. Nevertheless, his prose also retained warmth and charm when depicting human conditions and its follies.

The book is available on Amazon.

More: Pilch bio, about the book

Please contact Paulina for the Zoom invite or more info.