The Polish Book Institute

The most prestigious distinction for an eminent ambassador of Polish literature abroad, granted by the Book Institute, was awarded this year to Professor Silvano De Fanti, an outstanding translator of Polish literature into Italian.

Does Poland have to evoke only one association across the ocean – as the centre of the Holocaust? Is it possible to restore in its image the sense of pride, freedom, and energy that radiates from a portrait of Lisowczyk – The Polish Rider that can be admired in the Frick Collection in New York? Or maybe it is worth showing our Sarmatian heritage with a hint of self-irony, the Gombrowicz way, or even some kind of melancholy that a portrait of A Polish nobleman, in another museum, in Washington, also painted by Rembrandt, performs so perfectly? How to tear off the screws put to the ‘mugs’ of the Republic of Poland and show the true faces of its civic history?

Ewa Thompson, a winner of the 2020 Transatlantyk Award, talks about the weakening position of Slavic studies in the United States, the West’s interest in Gombrowicz and suggests what can be done to promote Polish culture abroad.