Jerzy Pilch undertook the challenge of dissecting national myths in the theatrical play entitled Narty Ojca Świętego (The Holy Father’s Skis, 2004). The action is set in a small town located in the mountains, which John Paul II used to visit for skiing. A rumour spreads among the locals that the Pope might return to the settlement in order to retire from his duties. Commotion arises as the inhabitants try to assess the consequences of such a turn of events. A sly con man arrives, who tries to sell skis, which allegedly belonged to the Holy Father. The play is an ironic analysis of the Polish cult of John Paul II. To the characters, the Pope is more of a media personage than a spiritual leader. The author wrote in the introduction to the play:
I’m not saying that I’m addressing the topic of the Pope out of some artistic-civil sense of duty, although the absence of this subject in contemporary art, especially in high art is astonishing. I’m not under the slightest illusion that I’m filling this gap in, furthermore, I don’t want to fill it in. I’m not asking about the Pope. I’m asking about people. I’m not asking: what’s happening with the Pope? I’m asking: what’s happening with people? What goes on, when they start to think, less seriously, seriously or dead seriously, about the Pope, about his presence in their lives?
Jerzy Pilch also wrote movie scripts. Yellow Scarf was filmed in 2000 and was directed by the acclaimed Polish director Janusz Morgenstern. Janusz Gajos played the main part of a wealthy alcoholic struggling against his addiction. The film won the Golden Claqueur award at the 25th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Love In An Underground Passage (2006) is a slice of life comedy featuring such stars as Robert Więckiewicz, Małgorzata Socha and Wojciech Malajkat.
Pilch’s books have been translated into several languages including English, Spanish, French, Russian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Lithuanian and Estonian. Pilch’s other books translated into English include Tysiąc Spokojnych Miast (A Thousand Peaceful Cities) from 1997, Inne Rozkosze (His Current Woman) from 1995, and Moje Pierwsze Samobójstwo (My First Suicide) from 2006.
The American literary magazine Kirkus Review singled out Tysiąc Spokojnych Miast as The Best Fiction of 2010. Their starred review, written by Van Lanen, says, ‘If laughter actually is the best medicine, fortunate readers of this wonderful novel will surely enjoy perfect health for the rest of their days. Pilch’s writing, all of it, just jumps off of the page. It’s witty, it’s touching; his sentences have so much life, there’s a real joy in his writing…who doesn’t love a story about a drunken plot to assassinate a communist despot with a bow and arrow?’ Pilch, in response, said to the Polish Press Agency that ‘the language used in my novels is hard to translate, so this is definitely a success’. The book was also nominated for a Best Translated Book Award that same year by Three Percent, Three Percent – a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester.
In 2012 theatre director Jacek Głomb staged an adaptation of Plich's 2008 novel Marsz Polonia (March, Polonia), in which a confrontation of ‘two Polands’ threatens to end in a bloody slaughter. Reality mingles with a nightmarish fantasy of history, mythology, truth, lies, comedy and tragedy. Welcome to Jerzy Pilch's visionary satire on Poles – the nation that seems incapable of agreeing on a common history and common bond. Later that year Kirkus Review selected the English translation of Pilch's Moje Pierwsze Samobójstwo (My First Suicide) for their Best Fiction of 2012 list.
Living with an incurable illness and the consciousness of the destruction of body and mind were the main subjects in Pilch's Drugi Dziennik (Second Diary), written in 2012 and 2013, and published in Tygodnik Powszechny. After 2013 the column changed its character and, under the title Drugi Dziennik albo Autobiografia w Sensie Ścisłym (Second Diary or an Autobiography in the Literal Sense), focuses on stories from the writer's childhood in Wisła.
In 2015 Zuza albo Czas Oddalenia (Zuza or the Time of Separation])was published. It is a story of a romance between a sixty-year-old and a young, beautiful girl. ‘An old satyr and a young nymph – ancient peoples, stubbornly returning to this subject knew, what they were doing’ – writes the author. The book explores the borderland between truth and fiction – an autobiographical novel and a fictionalized essay. The narrator is a writer born in Wisła, suffering from the Parkinson disease, living in Warsaw on Hoża street. All of these particulars are true (there are others, like his age, which are not), but it's here that provocations start. Dariusz Nowacki wrote: