He began his professional career as an author of courtroom reports for the newspaper Super Express. He later worked as a journalist and editor at various places. He became an expert on travelling, football and the biography of John Paul II, amongst others. He finished his career at Newsweek, a magazine with which he still collaborates as an author of feuilletons.
In 2004, he made his literary debut in the weekly Polityka with the story Historia portfela (The Story of a Wallet), which he submitted to a competition organized by Jerzy Pilch. Later Miłoszewski became involved with the Wydawnictwo W.A.B. publishing house. Since then, this firm has published all of his books.
In 2005 Wydawnictwo W.A.B. issued the horror novel Domofon (The Intercom). This thriller, which takes place in a seemingly normal Warsaw housing development, consists of gruesome hallucinations, nightmares, awkward sounds, enigmatic tenants and mysterious victims.
Miłoszewski proves that one doesn’t need gore and guts to scare the reader. The description of an elevator ride which covers four pages is horrifically captivating and repulsive at the same time, the nightmares of the heroes are unspeakably gruesome (Dawid Juraszek, www.esensja.pl).
In the afterword the author explains: I thought of this when I was riding with my brother in an elevator in a block of flats. We were joking around and wondering in how many ghastly horror scenes could one use such an elevator.
On commission from Juliusz Machulski Miłoszewski wrote a film script after Domofon. The book was translated into German, and a translation into Dutch is being prepared. In 2006 the children’s fairy tale Góry Żmijowe (The Adder Mountains) appeared. A year later Uwikłanie (Entanglement), the first part of the crime series about the prosecutor Teodor Szacki, was released.
Uwikłanie became a bestseller, and readers and critics quickly came to like Teodor Szacki, who is both an acerbic official and a smart prosecutor. Jerzy Pilch, whom Zygmunt Miłoszewski owes for his first publication, marvelled at the novel:
A great master has appeared in Polish literature: Zygmunt Miłoszewski - a true writer – wrote Jerzy Pilch in the newspaper Dziennik.
The novel won the author a High Calibre Award at the 5th Crime Story Festival. Uwikłanie appeared in Great Britain and in the USA and gathered great reviews in both countries. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who received a Found in Translation award in 2009, translated the book. In November 2011, on invitation from the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, the author of Uwikłanie, which was published in English under the title “Entanglement” (Bitter Lemon 2010), appeared as a guest at the 8th literary festival New Literature from Europe. The event was organized by eight New York-based European cultural institutes.
We invited Miłoszewski, because he’s an intelligent professional and he speaks good English. His book was translated into English and was filmed and we believe that Americans will be interested in it – said David Goldfarb of the Polish Cultural Institute.
His words were confirmed by a stellar review in Publishers' Weekly, which read:
Miloszewski takes an engaging look at modern Polish society in this stellar first in a new series starring Warsaw prosecutor Teodor Szacki. (...) Szacki, who's undergoing a midlife crisis and has ambivalent feelings about his wife, considers an affair with journalist hoping to get exclusive details on his inquiry. Readers will want to see more of the complex, sympathetic Szacki.
Readers from Croatia, Russia and Germany have also already met the Polish prosecutor. The book Uwikłanie was filmed by Jacek Bromski. Bromski’s film, the cast of which includes many stars, premiered on the 3rd of June 2011.
In the Autumn of 2011 Ziarno prawdy (A Grain of Truth) appeared. This book is another part of the series about the prosecutor Szacki. In Ziarno prawdy the main character is living in Sandomierz where he has moved from Warsaw. In Sandomierz Szacki tries to solve the puzzling case of a mysterious murder. At the same time he tries to avoid being sucked in by the quicksand of Polish-Jewish relations.
In 2011 Zygmunt Miłoszewski was nominated for the Passport award granted by the weekly Polityka. The nomination was justified as follows:
Miłoszewski has proved once again that the crime genre has ceased to merely entertainment . The investigation conducted by the prosecutor Szacki is a pretext to tell about the very Polish, shameful daemons of anti-Semitism. Additionally, as a bonus, Miłoszewski included a very tasty description of Sandomierz in Ziarno Prawdy – Robert Ostaszewski.
With Entanglement, which was published four years ago, he had already proved that the Polish historical and social essence can be used as a base for a contemporary crime novel, which may by all means compete with the best European productions. Grain of Truth, which was published in 2014, fully confirms that he not only has what is required of creators of popular literature, namely great writing skills, but also an enormous literary talent – Marta Mizuro.
In 2014 Miłoszewski received the Polityka Passport award. In the same year the third part of the trilogy about prosecutor Szacki was published. Rage - published in English in 2016 - is set in Olsztyn, the capital of Mazuria lake district. After the premiere the author said he's going to resign from writing crime fiction, since he doesn't want to earn money out of murder and violence anymore, which are widely represented in literature. Still, together with his brother Wojciech, he co-wrote the TV series Prokurator / Prosecutor with Jacek Koman and Wojciech Zieliński.
Priceless, published in 2013, after which he was named "a better Dan Brown", was proof he's doing great in different genres as well. Robert Ostaszewski wrote:
There are references to Pan Samochodzik, Indiana Jones, Bond movies, books about conspiracy theories and tens of other classics can be found in Priceless. This intertextual jugglery itself makes reading this novel a really fun experience.("Polityka", 9 lipca 2013).
Works:
- Historia portfela (The Story of a Wallet), 2004,
- Domofon (The Intercom), published in 2005 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (2nd edition: 2011),
- Góry Żmijowe (The Adder Mountains), published in 2006 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (translated into Ukrainian and Serbian: 2010),
- Uwikłanie (Entanglement), published in 2007 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (English edition: Bitter Lemon 2010),
- Ziarno prawdy (A Grain of Truth), published in 2011 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (English edition: Bitter Lemon 2012),
- Bezcenny (Priceless), published in 2013 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B.
- Gniew (Rage), published in 2014 by Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (English edition: Bitter Lemon 2016).
Sources: zygmuntmiloszewski.pl, www.wab.com.pl, www.polityka.pl
Lucyna Szura, March 2012; translated by Marek Kępa; updated by NMR, June 2016.