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  4. Miłoszewski Zygmunt

Polish literature

fot. Krzysztof Dubiel

Zygmunt Miłoszewski

Zygmunt Miłoszewski (b. 1976 in Warsaw) – novelist, screenwriter and journalist, one of Poland’s best known authors of popular literature.

Right from the word go Miłoszewski displayed his mistrust of highbrow literature; he saw himself as a craftsman working within the sphere of popular fiction, but prepared to take up any literary challenge. His first novel was Domofon (“The Intercom”, 2005), a horror story, a genre that is rare in modern Polish literature. His next publication was a children’s novel, Góry Żmijowe (“Serpent Mountains”, 2006), which is interesting in terms of form because it draws on classic examples of myths and legends as well as to the conventions of fantasy, and is also to some extent a pastiche.

The turning point in Miłoszewski’s career came with the excellent reception of Uwikłanie (Entanglement), published in 2007, which was the first in a crime series featuring Prosecutor Szacki.  Here too, though still at an early stage, Miłoszewski had an excellent sense of the genre: Uwikłanie has everything a well constructed, suspenseful crime novel should have. But the novel’s success was guaranteed by careful attention to the quality of the sub-plots. The entanglement of the title takes on various forms; in the first place, there’s political entanglement, in particular political crime,  where the key events are connected with the criminal activity of a special division of communist Poland’s secret police.

After a long gap and a screen adaptation of Uwikłanie, Miłoszewski’s next crime novel appeared, the second in the Szacki series, Ziarno Prawdy (A Grain of Truth, 2011). It follows the same creative approach – once again, a conventional crime story is coupled with  a socially relevant issue. This time the prosecutor is working in Sandomierz, where there’s an 18th-century painting hanging in the local cathedral that depicts the ritual murders of Christian children said to have been carried out by Jews. Taking Sandomierz as his example, Miłoszewski superbly reconstructs the small-town mentality, exposes the mechanisms that create prejudice and illustrates the pernicious power of dangerous stereotypes.

In Gniew (Rage), the final part of the series, Szacki has moved to Olsztyn to tackle the last and most difficult case in his career – involving the issue of domestic violence. The inquiry Szacki conducts in Gniew exposes above all the helplessness of the forces of law and order to deal with crimes committed behind the closed doors of private homes, whose victims are mainly women and children. As a background to the criminal plot Miłoszewski presents the complex history of Warmia and Olsztyn, which is still having a negative effect on the city in the present day.While working on the third crime novel, Miłoszewski published Bezcenny (Priceless), a thriller, the plot of which centres on a search for Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man”, which went missing during the Second World War. Bezcenny was the best-selling book of 2013. This success was repeated by a sequel, Kwestia ceny (“A Matter of Price”), in which the same central characters travel the world in search of the treasure of the Siberian Ainu people.In 2017 Miłoszewski published the novel of manners Jak zawsze (“As Ever”), a “what if?” book. The central characters shift back in time to the Poland of the 1960s, where following the Second World War a Social-Democrat and Peasant Party coalition is in power, and the country has ended up in the French sphre of influence. This is further proof of the fact that for Miłoszewski there is no literary genre that he cannot master; on the pages of Jak zawsze scenes of comedy shift smoothly into philosophical quandaries without interrupting the flow of the plot.

Most recently Miłoszewski has published a two-volume fantasy series for children, Hydropolis. Both books are not just a fine display of retrofuturistic imagination, but also a serious introduction to environmental issues.

Miłoszewski is extremely well-versed in the rules of various genres and is an expert at putting them to best advantage. The crime stories in his novels are always faultless in every detail, steered by a steady hand, keeping the reader in suspense to the final page. At the same time, he plays complicated plot games with his readers, misleads them and steers their emotions to perfection, a skill that only the best genre fiction writers have.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Domofon (“The Intercom”), Warsaw: W.A.B., 2005
  • Góry Żmijowe (“Serpent Mountains”), Warsaw: W.A.B., 2006
  • Uwikłanie (Entanglement), Warsaw: W.A.B., 2007
  • Ziarno prawdy (A Grain of Truth), Warsaw: W.A.B., 2011
  • Bezcenny (Priceless), Warsaw: W.A.B., 2013
  • Gniew (Rage), Warsaw: GW Foksal/W.A.B., 2014
  • Jak zawsze (“As Ever”), Warsaw: GW Foksal/W.A.B., 2017
  • Kwestia ceny (“A Matter of Price”), Warsaw: GW Foksal/W.A.B., 2020
  • Hydropolis: Uciekaj (“Hydropolis: Escape!”), Warsaw: GW Foksal/W.A.B., 2022
  • Hydropolis: Walcz (“Hydropolis: Fight!”),  Warsaw: GW Foksal/W.A.B., 2023

TRANSLATIONS

Belarusian:

  • Dolya pravdy (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Maryna Kazloyska, Vilnius: Logwinaj, 2015

Croat:

  • Upleteni (Uwikłanie), trans. Mladen Martić, Zagreb: Edicije Božičević, 2012
  • Zrno istine (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Mladen Martić, Zagreb: Edicije Božičević, 2016

Czech:

  • Zapleteni (Uwikłanie), trans. Pavel Peč, Prague: Host, 2011
  • Zrnko pravdy (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Tereza Pogodová, Prague: Host, 2014
  • Nezaplatitelny (Bezcenny), trans. Tereza Pogodová, Brno: Host, 2015
  • Hněv (Gniew), trans. Tereza Pogodová, Brno: Host, 2015

English:

  • Entanglement (Uwikłanie), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, London: Bitter Lemon Press, 2010
  • A Grain of Truth (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, London: Bitter Lemon Press, 2012
  • Rage (Gniew), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, AmazonCrossing, 2016
  • Priceless (Bezcenny), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, AmazonCrossing, 2018

French:

  • Les impliqués (Uwikłanie), trans. Kamil Barbarski, Bordeaux: Mirobole Editions, 2013; Paris: Pocket, 2015
  • Un fond de vérité (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Kamil Barbarski, Bordeaux: Mirobole Editions, 2015; Paris: Pocket, 2016
  • La rage (Gniew), trans. Kamil Barbarski, Paris: Fleuve noir, 2016
  • Inavouable (Bezcenny), trans. Kamil Barbarski, Paris: Fleuve noir, 2017; Paris: Pocket, 2018
  • Te souviendras-tu de demain? (Jak zawsze), trans. Kamil Barbarski, Paris: Fleuve noir, 2019

German:

  • Domofon (Domofon), trans. Jan & Katarzyna Opilka, Munich: dtv, 2008
  • Die Verstrickung (Uwikłanie), trans. Friedrich Griese, Munich: dtv, 2010
  • Warschauer Verstrickungen (Uwikłanie), trans. Friedrich Griese, Berlin: Berlin Verlag Taschenbuch, 2015
  • Ein Körnchen Wahrheit (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Barbara Samborska, Berlin: Berlin Verlag Taschenbuch, 2016
  • Der Zorn der Vergessenen (Gniew), trans. Barbara Samborska, Munich: Piper, 2018

Greek:

  • Énas kókkos alī́theias (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Anastasia Chatzigiannidi, Athens: Stereoma, 2019

Hebrew:

  • Ziarno prawdy, trans. Anat Zajdman, Tel Aviv: Penn Publishing House, 2014

Italian:

  • Il caso costellazione (Uwikłanie), trans. Beatrice Masini, Milan: Rizzoli, 2017
  • Il citofono (Domofon), trans. R. Belletti, Rome: 2022

Japanese:

  • Ikari. 1 (Gniew), trans. Toshiki Taguchi, Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2017
  • Ikari. 2 (Gniew), trans. Toshiki Taguchi, Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2017
  • Motsure (Uwikłanie), trans. Toshiki Taguchi, Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2018
  • Ichimatsu no shinjitsu (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Toshiki Taguchi, Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2019

Macedonian:

  • Troshka wistina (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Lidia Tanushevskaya, Skopje: Behemot, 2015
  • Smrtonosna terapiya (Uwikłanie), trans. Filip Dimevski, Skopje: Antolog, 2018

Russian:

  • Dolya pravdy (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Olga Lobodzhinskaya, Moscow: Text, 2014

Serbian:

  • Zmiyeve planine (Żmijowe Góry), trans. Milan Duškov, Belgrade: Jovan, 2009

Spanish:

  • El caso Telak (Uwikłanie), trans. Javier Villaverde Gonzalez, Madrid: Alfaguara, 2015; Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2019
  • La mitad de la verdad (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Francisco Javier Villaverde González, Madrid: Alfaguara, 2016; Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2019
  • La ira (Gniew), trans. Francisco Javier Villaverde González, Madrid: Alfaguara, 2016; Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2019

Slovak:

  • Zapletení (Uwikłanie), trans. Alexander Horák, Bratislava: Premedia, 2014
  • Zrnko pravdy (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Alexander Horák, Bratislava: Premedia, 2014
  • Hnev (Gniew), trans. Alexander Horák, Bratislava: Premedia, 2015
  • Domofón (Domofon), trans. Alexander Horák, Bratislava: Premedia, 2016

Turkish:

  • Cinayet Terapisi (Uwikłanie), trans. Seda Köycü, Istanbul: Koridor Yayıncılık, 2015

Ukrainian:

  • Zmiini gori (Żmijowe Góry), trans. Bozhena Antoniak, Lviv: Wydawnictwo Starovo Lieva, 2010
  • Terapia zlochiny (Uwikłanie), trans. Bozhena Antoniak, Lviv: Urbino, 2012
  • Zherno pravdi (Ziarno prawdy), trans. Bozhena Antoniak, Lviv: Urbino, 2013
  • Gniv (Gniew), trans. Bozhena Antoniak, Lviv: Urbino, 2015
  • Beztsinniy (Bezcenny), trans. Maria Shaguri, Yuriy Popsuenko, Kyiv: Ridna mova, 2017
  • Vtorgnenna (Jak zawsze), trans. Maria Shaguri, Kyiv: Ridna mova, 2018

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