Polish Books Coming to English Readers in 2026

kolaz-okladki-EN.jpeg, default, Collage of covers mentioned in the article, photo: courtesy of the publishers; collage by Culture.pl

language & literature

After a few strong years for Polish books in English translation, 2026 brings another rich mix: major classic writers rediscovered through new translations, some of Poland’s most exciting contemporary voices finding their English-language publishers, and an all-round sense that the world is catching up.

Culture.pl has not published this round-up for a few years, but the years in question have not been quiet ones. Jacek Dukaj’s Ice – a 1,200-page alternate-history epic set in a Russian-occupied, supernaturally frozen Poland, and widely considered the most ambitious Polish novel of the 21st century so far – finally reached English readers in November 2025 in Ursula Phillips’ translation for Head of Zeus, going on to be shortlisted for the British Book Awards and recently winning the Found in Translation award. Olga Tokarczuk, meanwhile, continued building her English-language presence with the folk-horror novel The Empusium in 2024 and a new edition of her early book House of Day, House of Night at the end of 2025 – a reminder, not that one was needed, that Polish literature’s moment in English is not a passing trend.

‘Conversations with an Executioner’ by Kazimierz Moczarski

Translator: Sean Gasper Bye. Publisher: Duckworth Books. Publication date: 14 May 2026

Perhaps the most unlikely of the year’s translations – unlikely only in the sense that one wonders why it has taken this long – is Conversations with an Executioner by Kazimierz Moczarski (1907–1975), coming from Duckworth Books in Sean Gasper Bye’s translation.

The circumstances of the book’s creation are almost too grim to summarise briefly. Moczarski was a journalist, a member of the Polish wartime resistance and – after the war – a victim of the communist regime he had risked his life to help establish. Arrested on false charges, he spent 255 days sharing a prison cell with Jürgen Stroop, the SS-Gruppenführer who had commanded the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. That Moczarski survived the experience, and later turned those 255 days of forced proximity into a book, is one of non-fiction literature’s macabre gifts.

What Moczarski produced is less a reckoning than an observation: a detailed, scrupulous portrait of how a man like Stroop thought, talked, remembered and justified himself. It has been compared, not unfairly, to Hannah Arendt’s reporting on Eichmann – the same cool attention to the mechanics of banality and horror. First published in Poland in 1977, it is a book that has been waiting for the readership it deserves.

‘Hexes of the Deadwood Forest’ by Agnieszka Szpila

Translator: Scotia Gilroy. Publisher: Penguin Random House. Publication date: 7 April 2026

The single biggest publishing event for Polish literature in English this year is almost certainly Hexes of the Deadwood Forest by Agnieszka Szpila (b. 1977), translated by Scotia Gilroy and published by Penguin Random House. The title signals a plunge into folk horror territory, rooted in the dark forest tradition that runs through Central European literature and mythology. Szpila is an established voice in Polish fiction – the move to one of the world’s largest publishers marks a significant shift in the scale of ambition for Polish literature in English.

Polish literature has often reached anglophone readers via smaller, literary-minded presses. A major commercial release of this kind suggests a growing confidence in its appeal to a broader audience. Whether that confidence is justified depends, as always, on the book – but the interest of a publisher like Penguin is its own kind of signal.

‘Golem’ by Maciej Płaza

Translator: Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Publisher: Pushkin Press. Publication date: 19 November 2026

Maciej Płaza is among the most celebrated of Poland’s younger generation of novelists, and Golem, published by Pushkin Press in Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ translation, brings him to English readers for the first time. The novel takes the ancient Jewish legend of the golem – the creature fashioned from clay and animated by mystical inscription, most famously associated with 16th-century Prague – and sets it loose in a contemporary Polish context.

Lloyd-Jones is arguably the most prolific and reliable translator of contemporary Polish fiction working today – as evidenced by the recent paperback release of her Penguin Book of Polish Short Stories, a landmark anthology that has done as much as any single volume to map the breadth of Polish fiction for English readers. Her involvement in Golem is in itself a mark of quality. Pushkin Press itself has an excellent record with Central European literature. On paper, at least, this is a pairing to be excited about.

‘Auroville’ by Katarzyna Boni

Book cover for "Auroville: A City of Dreams" by Katarzyna Boni. The top left corner features the title in black and the author's name in gold against a pale blue sky. The majority of the cover is filled with a close-up, angled view of the Matrimandir’s golden dome, showing its unique texture made of hundreds of overlapping, circular gold discs. At the bottom, it reads "Translated by Mark Ordon." — Book cover for 'Auroville: A City of Dreams' by Katarzyna Boni, photo: Open Letter Books

Translator: Mark Ordon. Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing. Publication date: 28 July 2026

Katarzyna Boni is one of Poland’s finest working journalists, and Auroville, translated by Mark Ordon and published by Deep Vellum, takes on one of modern history’s most extravagant utopian experiments: the intentional community founded in Tamil Nadu in 1968 by followers of the Indian spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo and his French collaborator, known as the Mother. At its peak, the project aimed at nothing less than a model city for all humanity – a place above nations, above politics, above the various usual methods by which people find to make each other miserable.

Boni’s earlier work – including Ganbare! Workshops on Dying, an account of Japan’s ageing population crisis – established her as a reporter with a rare ability to find the human story inside large, complex social phenomena. With Auroville, she turns her attention to a community that today counts some 3,000 residents from 60 countries, and which has been navigating, for more than half a century, the question of what it actually means to build a new world. The gap between those two sentences – between the founding ambition and the daily reality – is the space the book explores.

‘Paul Celan: A Life’ by Anna Arno

Translator: Soren Gauger. Publisher: Harvard University Press. Publication date: 9 June 2026

Anna Arno (b. 1979) is a Polish poet and literary critic, and her biography of Paul Celan – forthcoming from Harvard University Press, translated by Soren Gauger – is one of the year’s most significant literary non-fiction events. The book’s original Polish title, Tam, Za Kasztanami, Jest Świat (There, Behind the Chestnut Trees, Is the World), takes a phrase from Celan’s childhood memories of Chernivtsi, the multilingual, multi-ethnic city in what is now western Ukraine where he was born in 1920.

Celan – born Paul Antschel into a German-speaking Jewish family, was the sole survivor of the Holocaust among his immediate relatives and the author of the famed poem ‘Todesfuge’ (‘Death Fugue’). He spent most of his adult life in Paris and took his own life in 1970. While he is already one of the 20th century’s most written-about poets, what Arno brings is a distinctly Central European perspective: a poet from the part of the world Celan came from, writing about a poet who never entirely escaped where he came from. Gauger, who translates from both Polish and German, is well placed for the task.

‘Mer de Glace’ by Małgorzata Lebda

Cover of 'Mer de Glace' by Małgorzata Lebda, photo: Fitzcarraldo Editions

Translator: Mira Rosenthal. Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions. Publication date: 21 May 2026

Małgorzata Lebda (b. 1985) is one of the most striking voices in contemporary Polish poetry, and Mer de Glace – published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in Mira Rosenthal’s translation – takes its title from the famous glacier in the Mont Blanc range, the ‘Sea of Ice’ that has been visibly retreating for decades. Lebda’s poetry is rooted in landscape, ecological grief and the body’s relationship to the natural world.

Elsewhere this year, Fitzcarraldo is publishing a new updated edition of Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ translation of one of Olga Tokarczuk’s earliest novels, Primeval and Other Times, due out 10 September 2026. The publishing house no doubt has other Polish literature plans for the years ahead too.

‘Tuwim’s Train to Song’ by Julian Tuwim

Bilingual book cover for "Train to Song" / "Pociąg do piosenki" by Julian Tuwim, edited by MJ Kazmierski. The center features a black-and-white line drawing of a man in a suit and tie. The titles at the top and bottom are written in bold, playful lettering with each letter in a different color (red, blue, yellow, and green). The text "@ Bilingual Anthology" appears in the lower right corner. — Cover for Julian Tuwim's 'Train to Song', a bilingual anthology by MJ Kazmierski, photo: MJ Kazmierski / BiuroPerfekt

Translator: Marek Kazmierski. Publisher: BiuroPerfekt. Publication date: 1 June 2026

Julian Tuwim (1894–1953) is one of those writers whose name every Polish person knows and whose work almost every Polish person has memorised – in large part without realising it. His poems and songs became so embedded in the fabric of Polish culture that they stopped feeling like literature and started feeling like the language itself. Non-Polish readers, on the other hand, tend to encounter him only in passing. Tuwim’s Train to Song, a bilingual anthology translated by Marek Kazmierski and published by BiuroPerfekt, aims to change that.

The organising conceit is irresistible: Lokomotywa (Locomotive) – Tuwim’s beloved 1938 poem about a vast, puffing, unstoppable train, arguably the single most famous poem in the Polish children’s canon – opens the collection, and the 42 poems that follow are arranged thematically in its wagons. Each wagon contains a different category of Tuwim’s extraordinarily varied output: children’s verse, love songs, comic sketches, landscape lyrics, patriotic odes.

The range here is the point. Kazmierski – himself a poet and one of the more adventurous translators working between Polish and English today – has assembled a selection that shows Tuwim as not merely a children’s writer or lyricist, but as a poet whose singular gift was for capturing the sounds and rhythms of Polish life at full throttle, much like that locomotive.

‘Diary Without Vowels’ by Aleksander Wat

A book cover for "Dziennik bez samogłosek" by Aleksander Wat, published by Jagiellonian University Press. The design is minimalist on a cream background. The author's name is in small black caps at the top. Below, the Polish title is written in large, bold red letters with all the vowels removed, appearing as "DZ NN K B Z S M GŁ S K." A large, stylized black letter "A" is tilted diagonally in the lower left, partially overlapping the red text. The publisher's name is at the bottom in small black font. — Polish cover for ‘Diary Without Vowels’ by Aleksander Wat, photo: WUJ

Translator: Alissa Valles. Publisher: New York Review Books. Publication date: Autumn

New York Review Books is bringing out Diary Without Vowels by Aleksander Wat (1900–1967), translated by Alissa Valles – a significant event for anyone with an interest in 20th-century Polish poetry.

Wat’s story is one of the more extraordinary of a century that did not lack for extraordinary stories. Born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, he became a committed communist, was arrested by the Soviets in Lwów (today, Lviv) in 1940, spent years in prison and internal exile in Kazakhstan, eventually abandoned his beliefs altogether, emigrated to the West, and wrote some of the most anguished and luminous poetry in the language. His long-form memoir My Century, recorded in conversations with Czesław Miłosz, is already available in English. Diary Without Vowels is a more fragmentary, more intimate companion piece – a late work of extraordinary strangeness and emotional force.

‘Pact with the Devil on my own Skin’ by Stanisława Przybyszewska

Grainy pencil illustration of arm sculptures — Cover for the Polish version of 'Pact of the Devil on my own Skin' by Stanisława Przybyszewska, photo: Wydawnictwo Słowo promo materials

Translator: Soren Gauger. Publisher: Contra Mundum Press. Publication date: Autumn/Winter 2026

Contra Mundum Press continues its explorations of 20th-century literary outsiders with a new Stanisława Przybyszewska title in Soren Gauger’s translation. Przybyszewska (1901–1935) – who lived in extreme poverty and obsessive isolation, driven by her fixation on the figures of the French Revolution – is best known for her play The Danton Case, which Andrzej Wajda adapted into his celebrated 1983 film. The short stories contained in this new volume range from the near-autobiographical to the historical, sometimes blurring the two, but include her experiences of morphine addiction and life in abject poverty.

‘Glimmer: From the Outskirts of Greenland ’ by Ilona Wiśniewska

A book cover showing a close-up of a person dressed for winter next to a photo of ice shards — Book cover for 'Glimmer: From the Outskirts of Greenland' by Ilona Wiśniewska, translated by Kate Webster, photo: Akoya Publishing promo materials

Translator: Kate Webster. Publisher: Akoya Publishing Ltd. Publication date: 17 September 2026

With Greenland, for better or worse, appearing in the news more often, the release of Ilona Wiśniewska’s documentation of the island seems like ideal timing. Wiśniewska has made the far north her literary territory across several books, including Białe and Lud. Glimmer continues that project – a non-fiction account of her many months experiencing Arctic and sub-Arctic life, translated by the lauded Kate Webster for Akoya Publishing.

‘Szymanowska: Pianist, Composer, Muse’ by Danuta Gwizdalanka

Book cover featuring a 19th-century oil painting of Maria Szymanowska, a woman with dark curly hair wearing an ornate orange and white turban. She is dressed in a white Empire-waist gown with gold detailing and is seated at a period piano, her hands resting on the keys while looking directly at the viewer. — Book cover for 'Szymanowska: Pianist, Composer, Muse' by Danuta Gwizdalanka, photo: Equinox Publishing

Translator: Halina Maria Boniszewska. Publisher: Equinox Publishing. Publication date: September 2026

Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831) was one of the leading pianists of the early Romantic era – a virtuoso who toured across Europe, was admired by Goethe and Rossini, and composed prolifically, only to be largely forgotten in the century that followed.

Danuta Gwizdalanka’s biography, translated by Halina Maria Boniszewska for Equinox Publishing, is an overdue reconsideration of a pioneer.

‘The Vampire’ by Władysław Reymont

Translator: Filip Mazurczak. Publisher: Glagoslav Publications. Publication date: 17 March 2026

Władysław Reymont won the Nobel Prize in 1924 on the strength of his epic The Peasants (which had ‘a virtuosic new translation’ in 2024 thanks to Anna Zaranko), and his reputation has been somewhat trapped by it ever since. The Vampire, a supernatural novel published in 1911 and set between London and Paris, is a reminder that there was considerably more to him. Filip Mazurczak’s translation is published by Glagoslav and is out now.

That’s not all…

Book cover for "Song at Half Past Three" by Wojciech Bonowicz, translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese. The cover features a minimalist, artistic design consisting of a large, textured watercolor wash in shades of emerald and forest green. The green paint has organic, uneven edges against a light gray, textured background. The author's name, book title, and translator's credit are centered in a simple, dark sans-serif font over the green area. — Cover of 'Song at Half Past Three' by Wojciech Bonowicz, photo: Literary Waves Publishing

Wojciech Bonowicz’s Song at Half Past Three and Other Poems, translated by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, came out on 1 February 2026 from Literary Waves Publishing. As fellow poet Sasha Dugdale writes, ‘If initially Bonowicz’s poems seem surreal or playful, they quickly reveal themselves to be sharp splinters of philosophy, as discomfiting as they are absorbing.’

The new Ramsgate-based press Sideways Press, founded by translator Anna Blasiak and artist Lisa Kalloo with the explicit aim of getting more translated poetry into English, is publishing Psalm to Saint Sabina, an award-winning book of poetry by Radosław Wiśniewski, in Blasiak’s own translation. It is coming out around the same time as this article, 30 March 2026.

Speaking of poetry, Wisława Szymborska’s volume The Acrobat is coming out in English for the first time thanks to seasoned translator Clare Cavanagh mid-July 2026. Big name publisher Faber promises it to be a new introduction to the Nobel prize winner’s body of work, but it will certainly also be exciting for those already familiar with it. The title refers to Szymborska’s continual sense of astonishment at having survived so much global upheaval, as well as the disbelief and delight that life goes on – that the acrobat’s hands have caught the trapeze.

Out in September is Back Before You Wake: Conversations with Children of the Holocaust by Patrycja Dołowy, a journalist and author whose work tends to find the emotional core of large social stories. Translated by the busy Anna Blasiak, it is being published by Holland House Books.

Book cover titled "Uprawa roślin południowych metodą Miczurina" (Growing Southern Plants the Michurin Way) by Weronika Murek. The illustration shows a central figure wearing a thick, textured orange sweater and a large, folded white head covering that partially obscures the upper face with a translucent veil fastened by a red pin. The background is a monochromatic, dark, and misty forest of vertical tree trunks in the snow, creating a surreal and somber atmosphere. — Polish cover for 'Uprawa Roślin Południowych Metodą Miczurina' by Weronika Murek, photo: Czarne

The absurdist short story collection Cultivating Southern Plants Using Michurin’s Method by Weronika Murek – one of the more genuinely strange and funny writers in contemporary Polish literature – has been translated by Scotia Gilroy is due at the end of the year from MTO Press. Murek’s title alone, a reference to the Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko’s discredited theories, gives some indication of the book’s sensibility.

Also near the end of the year will be a collection of essays from philosophy professor Dariusz Karłowicz, all translated by Charles S. Kraszewski. The evocatively titled What do Poland and Jason Bourne Have in Common? is coming out on Teologia Polityczna.

Children’s book cover titled "The Underground Adventure of the Brave Frog Renée" by Mikołaj Pa and Gosia Herba. The illustration features a whimsical green frog with large yellow eyes, wearing blue overalls and a small orange satchel. The frog is walking through a dark navy-blue background, holding a flashlight that emits a bright yellow beam of light. The title is written in large, playful white and yellow lettering at the bottom. — Cover for 'The Underground Adventure of the Brave Frog Rene' by Mikołaj Pa & Gosia Herba, photo: Greystone Books

And finally, something for children: The Underground Adventure of the Brave Frog Renée by Gosia Herba and Mikołaj Pa, translated by Scotia Gilroy, will be published by Greystone Books on 3 November 2026. Its arrival comes off the success of Herba and Pa’s previous Gilroy-translated books for Greystone: No One is Home (2025) and No. 5 Bubblegum Street (2024), which was shortlisted for a Society of Authors’ Award in the UK.

In short, this long exhaustive list (well done for making down here) is proof it’s another good year to be a reader of Polish literature in English. And with supporters like the Book Institute, whose translation programme helps publishers bring these books to readers, we’re sure 2027 will be a good one too.

_{Written by Adam Zulawski, March 2026}

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