Non-writing
Robert Ostaszewski wrote about Łoziński for Gazeta Wyborcza:
Given the author’s young age and the fact that it’s a debut, his prose is surprisingly mature and skilfully written. I will perhaps risk stating that Reisefieber is the most promising literary entrée since Dorota Masłowska’s Wojna polsko-ruska.
Compared to another writers of his generation, Mikołaj Łoziński is an exception. He doesn’t strive to be modern, neither does he use convoluted, fanciful language. He doesn’t try to be the voice of his generation, or the chronicler of his times. Łoziński is surprisingly modest and natural, and refrains from calling himself a writer. As he explained in an interview with Beata Bereza:
My writing isn't spectacular, no doors or shutters bang, there’s no tempest outside the window, no one’s hair stands on end. My writing is rather non-writing … I described, in the best way I could, things that are basic and most important to me: feelings, emotions, relationships between people. It doesn’t matter whether the action is taking place in Paris, Warsaw, or Tychy.
His precision and reserved narration are unexpected – Reisefieber is only 162 pages long, as Łoziński crossed out seventy pages from the initial version. As quoted by Beata Kęczkowska in her article Laur dla Mikołaja Łozińskiego for Gazeta Wyborcza:
I write slowly, self-consciously, with each new sentence I have thousands of doubts … With each page I am afraid that finally it will be uncovered that in reality I can do nothing and that I don’t know anything about people.
But the readers and critics do not have such doubts. The novel has been translated into German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovene, Latvian, and Russian.
The author himself is impatiently waiting for a translation into French. In Paris he worked as an assistant to a blind psychotherapist, who became the prototype for Aude, one of the characters in Reisefieber. In an interview for Wysokie Obcasy, Łoziński confessed:
I got to know her a little during the two years and liked her very much. She doesn’t know that there’s a character based on her in Reisefieber, I was too embarrassed to tell her… If the book gets released in French, I am hopping on a plane and visiting her to read Reisefieber out loud. Just like I read other books to her. This is my biggest dream when it comes to Reisefieber.
A turtle, a bacterium, a hill myna bird
After the complex, almost Bergmanesque Reisefieber, Łoziński’s next book came as a surprise. Instead of characters tormented by uncertainty, animals appear on the scene – a turtle, a dog, a fly, a hill myna bird, and even a bacterium. Fairytales for Ida, published in 2008, are dedicated to children. Łoziński writes about animals cleverly and tenderly. They have their experiences, too – the turtle suffers when his little owner doesn’t pay attention to him, the dog is anxious about his owners’ divorce. In an interview with Beta Kęczkowska, the writer further described why he wrote the book:
I wrote my first fairytale for Ida’s, my brother’s daughter, ninth birthday. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I bought her some silly computer game, I was a bit embarrassed. I decided to give her a fairytale about a turtle. And then next ones, about other animals. Maybe fairytales will at least make me look better in Ida’s eyes?
According to Beata Kęczowska, Łoziński is as skillful a writer of children’s books as he is a novelist. As she wrote for Gazeta.pl/eDziecko in Wszyscy mali zaczytani article, 29.05.2008:
Right now the author deserves congratulations – the courage needed to write fairytales has to be appreciated! … His stories about friendship, responsibility and love are wise and unpretentious. They’re touching and witty.