The Polish Book Institute

A volume of Zbigniew Herbert's selected works entitled Naklon moje sjenke has been published on the Croatian market. The publication of the selection translated by Đurđica Čilić was supported by the Book Institute as part of the ©POLAND Translation Programme.

The book was published by the V.B.Z. publishing house from Zagreb. Translator and author of the selection Naklon moje sjenke Đurđica Čilić has been dealing with the works of Zbigniew Herbert for many years. In 2008, she co-edited another Croatian selection of works by the author of Pan Cogito (“Mr Cogito”) - entitled Moć ukusa ('The Power of Taste'). The poems, essays, and drama published in that book were translated into Croatian by eleven translators associated with the Department of Polish Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy of Zagreb University.

At the same time, we would like to note that the Book Institute has so far subsidised 48 other books with translations of Zbigniew Herbert's works into foreign languages. These included translations of the poet's works into Albanian, Belarusian, Estonian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, Ukrainian, and Romanian.

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The ©Poland Translation Programme is one of the Book Institute's flagship programmes. Its aim is to promote Polish literature around the world by providing financial support for the publication of Polish books in translation into foreign languages. Foreign publishers may use the funding grant to finance part of the work's publication costs, including, among other things, the translation of the work from Polish into another language, the purchase of copyright licences, and the printing of the book. In 2023 alone, we have subsidised 229 foreign editions of Polish books to be published by publishing houses from 46 countries, to which we have allocated almost PLN 5 million. In all editions of the programme, we have already subsidised a total of more than 3,000 translations of Polish books into foreign languages.

RP/IK