Speech 2: Andrzej Stasiuk
Andrzej Stasiuk, born in Warsaw in 1960, is considered to be one of the most successful contemporary writers of the younger generation in Poland. In his debut volume of stories Mury Hebronu (“The Walls of Hebron”), published in 1992, he writes about his experiences of violence in prison. Stasiuk was drafted for military service in 1980, deserted after nine months and served his sentence in military and civil penitentiaries. In 1986 he moved to Czarne, a small hamlet in the Beskids in southern Poland.
Stasiuk is a freelancer writer for Czas Kultury magazine and the weekly newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny. Wiersze milosne i nie (“Love and non-love poems”) was published in 1994, Opowiesci Galicyjskie (“Galician Tales”) followed by Bialy Kruk (translated as “White Raven”, London, 2000) in 1995, the volume of short stories Przez rzeke (“Across the River”; “The Journey” is taken from this volume) in 1996 and Dukla in 1997.
After setting up his own publishing house Czarne, he published a collection of texts by Zygmunt Haupt (1907-1975), leading to the author’s rediscovery in Poland. Haupt, who emigrated to the US, is considered a master of literary reportage.
In 2002 Stasiuk was awarded the Samuel Bogumil Linde Literary Prize, donated by the partner cities of Thorn (Poland) and Göttingen (Germany). In 2005 his book Jadąc do Babadag (“Travelling to Babadag”) received the Nike Literary Award for best Polish book of the year.
Akademietheater, 30. November 2009
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