The NIKE is a prize for the best book of the year published in Polish; it was first presented in 1997. The list of 20 books nominated for the 2009 award was announced on 21 May 2009, on the first day of the 54th International Book Fair in Warsaw.
- Podwójny krajobraz ["Double Landscape"], Irit Amiel (Prószyński i S-ka)
A collection of several dozen short stories by the Polish and Jewish writer, poet, translator. Each of these miniatures is a memory of an old experience from the Nazi occupation, each of these obsessive childhood images recurs and torments to this day: "In the hottest August night of 2005 I had that nagging dream again. ... Partisans are leading several German prisoners. The Germans look like Jews. Terrified, filthy, unshaven. I remember thinking, 'What, Germans are people too?'," - Amiel writes in the story "Zemsta niedokonana" ["Unaccomplished Revenge"].
- Fabryka muchołapek ["The Flypaper Factory"], Andrzej Bart (WAB)
The writer narrates the imaginary Łódź trial of Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Judenrat in the Łódź Ghetto. The question returns: Was Rumkowski, who died at Auschwitz in 1944, a collaborator of the occupying forces or a victim - aware of the approaching Extermination, he organized life in the ghetto to save whoever he could? "This is a book carved into my back over 25 years. … When I was a boy I heard that - allegedly - Jews going to their deaths threw him alive into the crematorium furnace. That really threw me as a kid," - says Bart about his novel.
- Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet ["Pocket Atlas of Women"], Sylwia Chutnik (ha!art)
"I combined my two passions - my love for Warsaw with my love for women. ... I wanted to set the plot of that part of the book in the history of a city where women lived and still live," Sylwia Chutnik says. The story unfolds in a tenement house in Opaczewska Street in the Warsaw district of Ochota. The characters are Czarna Mańka, Maria, Marysia, and Mr/Ms Marian. "At a meeting with readers someone accused me that men in my book were either absent or horrible. It's true. 'Pocket Atlas of Women' is not a book about men. That's tendentious. I agree," the writer explains.
- Balzakiana ["Balzaciana"], Jacek Dehnel (WAB)
The poet, translator of Philip Larkin, author of such works as Lala ["Dolly"], Rynek w Smyrnie ["Market Square in Smyrna"], winner of the Kościelski Prize, offers four neo-classical short stories inspired by the great prose of Balzac, but transferred all the way into Polish contemporary reality. Not a fast-paced plot but calm psychological observation is the asset of this prose. The inferior heroes of Dehnel's prose include the nouveau-riche Mr. and Mrs. Włos who made money on the Poldrobeks company, Adrian Helsztyński snobbishly modelling himself on noble ancestors ("Miłość korepetytora" ["A Tutor's Love"]), and the Zarębski family ("Tońcia Zarębska") burdened by their granny, old Tońcia.
- Antypody ["The Antipodes"], Sławomir Elsner (Biuro Literackie)
This is the second volume, after Afekt ["Passion"], by the young poet. Simple, separate, austere, closed, laconic - is how this poetry is often described. "Elsner is not afraid to use words which we have long not seen in Polish poetry, where none of those words loses its power of expression, none of them seems outdated. The hero of Elsner's poems is stretched between a need for silence (muffling the noise of the world) and a desire for conversation, the simplest but also, as it turns out, most difficult communication with others," Andrzej Franaszek wrote about this volume.
- Inne tempo ["A Different Pace"], Jacek Gutorow (Biuro Literackie)
Jacek Gutorow, translator, literary scholar, poet, recently published the volume of poetry Linia życia ["The Life Line"] and the collection of essays Urwany ślad ["The Lost Trail"]. Inne tempo ["A Different Pace"] is his latest volume of poems. Some of them are separate, brief, laconic, others like "Kasztan" ["Chestnut"] or "Śliwy" ["Plum Trees"] are extensive and rich, with fragments of poetic prose. Others still form cycles ("Metamorfozy" ["Metamorphoses"], "Bug", "Zbliżenia" ["Close-ups"]), or, like "Nad brzegiem rzeki" ["On the Riverbank"], are separate longer poems. In "Jadąc na wieczór poezji" ["Going to a Poetry Evening"] from the poems about poetry "Zbliżenia" ["Close-ups"] we read: "Come out of pretty poems / and not show anything. / Will they understand?"
- Baw się ["Have Fun"], Roman Honet (Biuro Literackie)
The seemingly carefree title of Roman Honet's volume should not be taken literally. The whole collection, made up of 5 separate parts, is streaked with a constant fear, or perhaps even certainty, of fading, passing, death. The end is a void, it brings no liberation. Among the props and poetic images, there disturbingly recur coffins, hospices, cemeteries: "they will lay us / in a cemetery for unbelieving animals. / together - you'll whisper - for I waited so many years for this day. / separately - I'll say - because so many days / passed, flowed without you," Honet writes.
- Bambino, Inga Iwasiów (Świat Książki)
"I decided the time had come when I had to tell the story of how this town was born after the war. My grandmother is 86, and it's people from her generation who know the beginning of the story. It's a question of physiology of memory, a question of the existence of a history which could be irrevocably erased," said Inga Iwasiów about the reasons why she wrote Bambino. The novel's title is the name of a milk bar in the town's centre. The bar from the title plays a symbolic role, Iwasiów ponders on the identity of the German and Polish town and presents a panorama of the whole of People's Poland, from World War II until 1981.
- Gesty ["Gestures"], Ignacy Karpowicz (Wydawnictwo Literackie)
A new novel from the author of Niehalo ["Uncool"] and Cud ["The Miracle"]. Grzegorz arrives in his provincial native parts to see his ill, ageing mother and realizes they have little in common. He returns to childhood memories, wanting to understand his life and his family, to arrange things, but it's tougher than he thought. For example, he recalls his parents quarrelling: "subject one: mother is wasteful and spends too much. Subject two: the mother-in-law. Subject three: me and my studies. ... Father never accepted my choice; instead of a doctor, I became a ne'er-do-well, that is, a theatre director."
- Utwór o matce i ojczyźnie ["A Work About Mother and Homeland"], Bożena Keff (ha!art)
"A monster work" is how the writer herself described Utwór o Matce i Ojczyźnie. "It's a cross between an opera, a tragedy, and an oratorio. Genres are mixed in the same way as a lofty lament with crude abuse, and real characters - mainly Mother and Daughter - with fictional ones. In one scene, Lara Croft hears out the Mother's complaints, in another the Daughter identifies with the brave Ripley from Ridley Scott's film ... . Watching all this is the Chorus which, as if in a grotesque version of a Greek tragedy, recites its biased remarks," Przemysław Czapliński wrote enthusiastically in "Tygodnik Powszechny".
- Król festynów ["The King of Fêtes"], Paweł Konnak - "Konjo" (Instytut Mikołowski)
"I have a friend Adaś / he used to be a millionaire / and now he's a dustman in Toronto / after an ich troje concert in ontario place / he gave me his worker's outfit / who calls first will be 'it'." The author is the second representative of the Gdańsk avant-garde, next to Wojciech Stamm. He debuted as a poet 12 years ago with the volume Sztuka restauracji ["The Art of Restoration"], followed by Randka z mutantem ["Rendez-vous With a Mutant"]. Konnak, a showman and performer, avoids any lofty style. He says: "I present a joyful nihilism. I am aware that anyone who thinks I'm a complete whacko will be confirmed in their belief."
- Capcarap, Artur Liskowacki (Forma)
Artur Daniel Liskowacki's most famous novel is
Eine kleine - a finalist of the Nike 2001 competition. Capcarap is a collection of simple realistic stories: a story about a bitch and her puppies seen on the beach, or about noisy teenagers observed on a bus. All the texts are connected by the same narrator, who is rather similar to the author himself.
"Every character is an author at some point. This narrator is different from my previous ones in that he moves among the space of my experience. I don't know where I end and he begins," Liskowacki explains.
- Między nami dobrze jest ["We Get On Well With Each Other"], Dorota Masłowska (Lampa i Iskra Boża)
Drama seldom makes it to the Nike list, but this time the nominees include the latest play by Dorota Masłowska, winner of a Nike prize for Paw królowej ["The Queen's Peacock"]. The characters in this grotesque piece, playing with the stereotypes of recent Polish history, are a grandmother, mother and daughter living together in Warsaw. "Somewhere in there is a reference to my family home, I too was brought up by my grandmother and mother. Three people constantly getting in one another's way, for whom the same concept meant something completely different. ... It's only now that I see the exotic nature of that experience," Masłowska says.
- Pałac Ostrogskich ["Ostrogski Palace"], Tomasz Piątek (WAB)
The main theme of Piątek's output, for instance from the famous Heroina ["Heroin"]: "I'm a drug addict, in all of my 'adult' life I've spent about a million zlotys on drugs, alcohol, restaurants and taxis, that's why I don't have a home and live with my parents," the narrator admits. The author himself says: "It's a book about someone trying to disentangle himself from being a thing and returning to humanity, being reborn. Having a choice in life." Personal memories are mingled here with essays and the fantasy of novels. Warsaw's Ostrogski Palace forms a backdrop.
- Marsz Polonia ["March Polonia"], Jerzy Pilch (Świat Książki)
The protagonist of Pilch's novel receives an invitation to an extravagant party thrown by Beniamin Bezetzny, once a clever columnist, then press spokesman for the government of People's Poland, now a press magnate and financial shark. Many of the characters' original models can be guessed, including the narrator's: "I had lived in Warsaw for 10 years, but also for 10 years I hadn't stepped beyond Hoża Street." " 'March...' is not a political novel. The political substance serves metaphysics here. The portraits of politicians hang not in a hall of shame or fame, but in a hall of coffin portraits," the author says.
- Księga ocalonych snów ["The Book of Salvaged Dreams"], Krystyna Sakowicz (Forma)
These are essays, but more like stories, by an author already nominated for the Nike prize in 2001 for her novel Śnienie ["Dreaming"]. A book about dreams and dreaming - a mysterious, different (higher?) state of consciousness. Sakowicz traces oneiric, dreamlike mysteries in works by other writers, to mention Lechoń, Dąbrowska. "Dreams as one of the main sources of art and in art are not anyone's whim or oddity, for it (for art) and in it they are as fundamental as words in literature, as movement in dance, as space and colour in painting. Dreams create their own ontological reality," wrote Henryk Bereza about Sakowicz's prose in "Twórczość" monthly.
- Królowa tiramisu ["Queen of Tiramisu"], Bohdan Sławiński (Jacek Santorski)
The protagonist of Bohdan Sławiński's novel is Peter, or rather Petey - a delicate, sensitive and tender person. The thoughtful boy gets involved with a mature, well-off married woman. "A child and the first object of his amorous fascination - the mother, then the awakening of sexuality, maturing, the search for a woman who would be a lover and a surrogate mother... Brilliantly, with a great sense of style and linguistic verve, the author leads us across a minefield of issues whose importance we realize but which we prefer not to ask about," wrote Leszek Bugajski about Królowa tiramisu.
- Czarna Matka ["Black Mother"], Wojciech Stamm (WAB)
The debut novel of Wojciech Stamm, author of several small volumes of poetry, scriptwriter and performer who worked years ago with the TotArt group and "BruLion". Czarna Matka describes those very 1980s and 1990s, years important to Stamm. The novel's main character, Włodek Wolek, inhabitant of a high-rise housing estate in Gdańsk, is slightly reminiscent of the writer himself, and the inquiring reader will find more references to various familiar circles. Wolek's life is a series of ordeals, defeats, and humiliations: first here in Poland, then in Norway where he lives from hand to mouth, finally in Germany, where Wolek applies for asylum.
- Piosenka o zależnościach i uzależnieniach ["A Song About Dependences and Addictions"], Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki (Biuro Literackie)
A new book of poetry from the author of the volumes Kamień pełen pokarmu ["A Stone Full of Nourishment"], Dzieje rodzin polskich ["A History of Polish Families"], winner of the Gdynia Literary Prize. Many phrases and poems, which is characteristic of Dycki, return in different variations and attempts: "The return of the same phrases does not make the message of the poems clearer or more obvious. On the contrary: successive recurrences of words and sentences ... blur the already vague letter of the poems. Yet this repeatability of phrases becomes the poet's identifying feature, a trace of his presence," wrote Jacek Gutorow in "Tygodnik Powszechny" weekly.
- Gulasz z turula ["Turul Goulash"], Krzysztof Varga (Czarne)
Varga's previous novel, Nagrobek z lastryko ["Terrazzo Tombstone"], was about Polish history and symbols; now, in this volume of essays, Varga turns to the Hungarians. "This is a clownishly sad and wittily bitter book. In it Krzysztof Varga tells us about contemporary Hungarian society which cannot free itself of a longing for greatness. And since history has not blessed the Hungarians with victories, they have turned their national cuisine into a paradoxical battlefield. ... At the same time, though, they turn their banquet table into a singular prison of identity," as Przemysław Czapliński wrote about Gulasz z turula.
The jury: Edward Balcerzan, Tadeusz Bartoś, Grażyna Borkowska (chair), Tadeusz Bradecki, Kinga Dunin, Tomasz Fiałkowski, Marcin Król, Dariusz Nowacki, and Marta Wyka will choose the seven finalists in early September, and then the winning book on the first Sunday of October - on 4 October 2009.
"The NIKE is a prize for the book of the year. It is presented every year in October for the best book of the previous year. The aim of the award is to promote Polish literature, with a special focus on novels.
The competition is open to all literary genres (including autobiographies, essays, memoirs, etc.) as well as works in the humanities of major literary value. The competition is for living authors only.
The prize may not be split or not awarded. Studies and collective works are not eligible for the competition.
The winner is selected in a three-stage competition. In stage one the judges award 20 nominations, which are announced in May; stage two is the selection of seven finalists, announced in September. The judges decide who the award will go to on the same day their decision is announced and the prize is presented. Until that time, neither the winner nor the finalists in attendance know what the competition results will be."
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