Zyta Rudzka (born 1964) is a masterful writer, whose terse and forceful style is rapidly gaining her a place among Poland’s best contemporary novelists. Her first novel, Dr. Josef’s Little Beauty, was revised and reissued in 2021 as one of a trilogy of novels that explore old age and the final stage of life.
Despite shared themes, each book stands on its own and has other central themes as well. Rudzka’s other two novels are A Brief Exchange of Fire (2018, winner of the Gdynia Literary Award, shortlisted for the Nike Literary Award) and Soft Tissues (2020, winner of the City of Warsaw Literary Award).
Her novel, Only Those with Teeth Can Smile, moves away from the old-age theme, but is just as hard-hitting as its predecessors, and has won the 2023 Nike Literary Award, Poland's top literary prize. Her novels are now appearing in foreign translations. Dr. Josef’s Little Beauty is her first to appear in English translation. Rudzka is also an award-winning playwright and poet. In 2022 she won the Poznań Literary Award for her entire oeuvre to date.
Rudzka's prose is marked by a search for the appropriate rhythms and melodies to set free a new language conveying the sensualism of feasts and the hungers of human passion. Her prose is characteristically fragmented, an open-ended "narrative jazz" imbued with poetic elements.
"I feel, think and write in images, impressions, touch, smells. The world that I have been allowed to perceive is not linguistic." (Zyta Rudzka)
As a playwright she debuted with Fruwanie dla ornitologów / Flying for ornitologists, staged by Marcin Sosnowski in Bajka Theatre (2004) under the title Seks, chemia i latanie / Sex, chemistry and flying (2005). Her second play Cukier Stanik won the first prize in the Forum Dramatu contest in Łódź (2007) and was shortlisted for the Gdynia Drama Award (2008). Her following plays were Eskimos w podróży służbowej / Eskimo on a business trip (2009), Pęknięta, obwiązana nitką / Broken, tied with a String (2010), Ten się śmieje, kto ma zęby / Laugs, who has teeth (2010) and Zimny bufet / Cold Buffet (2011). The last of the plays won the Gdynia Drama Award in 2011.
Zyta Rudzka's works have been translated among others into German, Russian, Croatian, Italian, Czech and French.
Source: www.polska2000.pl, Copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza, updated by NMR, September 2016.
