Polish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages used in Poland over the centuries have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Latin, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Russian, German and Esperanto. According to Czesław Miłosz, for centuries Polish literature focused more on drama and poetic self-expression than on fiction. The reasons were manifold but mostly rested on the historical circumstances of the nation. Polish writers typically have had a more profound range of choices to motivate them to write, including past cataclysms of extraordinary violence that swept Poland, but also, Poland's collective incongruities demanding an adequate reaction from the writing communities of any given period.
A pen name, also called a nom de plume or a literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
Horrible Histories is a series of illustrated history books published in the United Kingdom by Scholastic, and part of the Horrible Histories franchise. The books are written by Terry Deary, Peter Hepplewhite, and Neil Tonge, and illustrated by Martin Brown, Mike Phillips, Philip Reeve, and Kate Sheppard.
Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country. He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda accorded him the title "Maestro".
Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. A. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the "Adventures of You" series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976.
A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not follow paragraphs in a linear or ordered fashion. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA after the influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books. Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction.
Tadeusz Różewicz was a Polish poet, playwright, writer, and translator. Różewicz was in the first generation of Polish writers born after Poland regained its independence in 1918, following the century of foreign partitions. He was born in Radomsko, near Łódź, in 1921. He first published his poetry in 1938. During World War II, he served in the Polish underground Home Army. His elder brother, Janusz, also a poet, was executed by the Gestapo in 1944 for serving in the Polish resistance movement. His younger brother, Stanisław, became a noted film director and screenwriter.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in addition to leading American literary trends. It was acquired by Random House in 1960, and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group division of Penguin Random House which is owned by the German conglomerate Bertelsmann. The Knopf publishing house is associated with its borzoi colophon, which was designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925.
The Reader is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades.
Jerzy Pilch was a Polish writer, columnist, and journalist. Critics have compared Pilch's style to Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera, or Bohumil Hrabal.
A Perfect Vacuum is a 1971 book by Polish author Stanisław Lem, the largest and best known collection of Stanislaw Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexisting books. It was translated into English by Michael Kandel. Some of the reviews remind the reader of drafts of his science fiction novels, some read like philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers, finally others satirize and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.
Varujan Vosganian is a Romanian politician, economist, essayist and poet of Armenian origin. Vosganian was Romania's Minister of Economy and Commerce (2006–2008) in the Tăriceanu cabinet and Minister of Economy in the Ponta cabinet (2012–2013). He is the President of The Union of Armenians in Romania and the Prime-vice president of the Union of Writers in Romania (2005–present). His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
What My Mother Doesn't Know (2001) is a novel in verse by Sonya Sones. The free-verse novel follows ninth-grader Sophie Stein as she struggles through the daily grind of being a freshman in high school, her romantic crushes, and her family life. It has been translated into French, German, Indonesian and Swedish, and published as an audiobook read by Kate Reinders.
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction between translating and interpreting ; under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.
Liberature is literature in which the material form is considered an important part of the whole and essential to understanding the work.
Kristina Sabaliauskaitė is an art historian, doctor honoris causa of Vilnius Academy of Arts and one of the most prominent contemporary Lithuanian writers. Born in Vilnius, she has been based in London since 2002. She worked as a foreign correspondent in London and columnist for Lithuania's biggest daily newspaper until 2010.
Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books may be found in his following works: in three collections of faux reviews of fictional books: A Perfect Vacuum, Provocation, and Library of 21st Century translated as One Human Minute, and in Imaginary Magnitude, a collection of introductions to nonexistent books.
House of Day, House of Night is a novel by Olga Tokarczuk, published by Wydawnictwo Ruta in 1998.
Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942–1945 is a 2016 book by Polish historian Barbara Engelking. It was first published in Polish in 2012 as Jest taki piękny, słoneczny dzień: Losy Żydów szukających ratunku na wsi polskiej 1942–1945. It focuses on the subject matter of The Holocaust in Poland.
The Books of Jacob is an epic historical novel by Olga Tokarczuk, published by Wydawnictwo Literackie in October 2014. It is Tokarczuk's ninth novel and is the product of extensive historical research, taking her seven years to write.
