Lód is arguably Dukaj’s most ambitious attempt to create an alternative world with its own physics, technology, history and even logic. The start of a different reality is spurred by the fall of the Tunguska meteoroid in 1908, causing a climatic disaster resulting in the freezing of half of Europe, the discovery of new technologies based on frozen iron and, in consequence, Russia’s economic success and the perpetuation of the Romanoff dynasty. Laws of physics change, too, causing the appearance of opposites of light and electricity. Both have a surprising effect on the human mind, loosening the causal relationships and weakening the perception of time, the past becoming dependent on the current perception of the present. Meanwhile, the Tsarist authorities force the book’s key character, Benedykt Gierosławski, son of a Siberian exile, to look for his father. When, owing to the Bulgarian inventor Tesla, he achieves some control over the new physical phenomena, things that beat description start to happen.
Dukaj’s following book, Wroniec / The Crowe is a magical tale about the seven-year-old Adaś, who witnesses the dramatic events of the Polish martial state. Krzysztof Cieślik wrote in Polityka weekly:
It’s an extraordinary book. Dukaj combines various styles, the language of a little boy with a grotesque newspeak. The protagonists seem like characters from comic books and the serious subject is taken into a frame of a nightmare. The spirit of Lewis Carroll and the brothers Grimm floats upon the whole book, although Dukaj also references Cormac McCarthy, Edgar Allan Poe, Stefan Żeromski and Tadeusz Konwicki.
The book was illustrated by Jakub Jabłoński. A board game about the martial state was inspired by it, and Kazik Staszewski wrote two songs that illustrated it. Wroniec was shortlisted for the Literary Central Europe Award Angelus in 2010 and was nominated for the Zeidel Prize.
