Born in Kędzierzyn-Koźle in Silesia in 1956, Rudnicki is a writer and political emigré living in Hamburg since 1983.
He studied Slavic and Germanic languages and literatures there and has also translated fragments of his own writing into German. While working in a Hamburg publishing house, he has maintained steady contacts with Poland and especially with the Twórczość (editor's translation: Creativity) literary magazine circle in Warsaw.
What is Rudnicki's writing like? Provocative, shameless and grotesque. Rudnicki describes the reality he knows best, step by step, rejecting social and aesthetic conventions. His protagonist seems to be simple, sentimental and not terribly refined. Yet this ordinariness does not exclude the extraordinary. As a Pole living in Germany, and also as a provincial who has moved to the metropolis, and above all as a writer rooted in the whirl of the everyday. Rudnicki embodies the individual hero who speaks and thinks about ordinary things in an exceptional way. Language is the primary experience. Language constructs the protagonist and the author. The colloquial language, lightly stylized with Old Polish phrases is sensitive to the melody of speech, forceful, and concrete.
He was nominated for the Nike Literary Award in 2008 for his Chodźcie, Idziemy (Let’s Go, trans. AP). He was a Nike Award 2010 finalist, a 2010 Angelus Central European Literature Award semifinalist, and nominated for the 2010 Gdynia Literary Prize and the Reymont Prize for his Śmierć Czeskiego Psa (The Death of a Czech Dog, trans. AP). The book encompasses portraits of the intelligentsia, emigrants, Andersen and dogs. Each one of the book’s protagonists – a Gastarbeiter, a teacher or a prisoner – share similar features, loneliness, and misanthropy, perhaps, reflecting the fate of the archetypical Pole. Rudnicki returned to these themes in his Trzy Razy Tak! (Three Times Yes!, trans. AP), a collection of short forms published in 2013. In Życiorysta (The Biographer, trans. AP; 2015) the author outlines the lives of important members of the public life, including Angela Merkel, Danuta Wałęsa, Richard Wagner and the Grimm brothers. In his Życiorysta Dwa (The Biographer Two, trans. AP) published in 2017, Rudnicki examines the lives of famous figures once again. This time, he interprets the biographies of personalities like Czesław Miłosz and Thomas Mann. He finishes his book off with reviews and short literary forms.
Source: www.polska2000.pl, Copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza, update: AP, February 2019
Selected Bibliography
- Można Żyć (It's a Living), Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wroclaw 1992;
- Cholerny Świat (Damned World), Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wroclaw 1994;
- Tam i z Powrotem po Tęczy (There and Back on the Rainbow), PIW, Warsaw 1997;
- Męka Kartoflana (Potato Pangs), Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wrocław 2000.
- Trzy razy tak! (Three Times Yes!), W.A.B., Warszawa 2013;
- Życiorysta (The Biographer), W.A.B., Warszawa 2014;
- Życiorysta dwa (The Biographer Two), W.A.B., Warszawa 2017.
Selected translations
Czech:
- Smrt ceskeho psa (Śmierć czeskiego psa), Vera Vytrisalova, Jan Faber, Protimluv, Ostrava 2008;
- Mein Kampf a moje jiné boje (Mój Wehrmacht), Dauphin, Praha-Podlesí 2012;
- Pojďte, jdeme (Chodźcie, idziemy), Dauphin, Praha-Podlesí 2012.
German:
- Meine Abenteuer mit Menschen oder wie ich als Statist und Rezensent tätig war (Moje Przygody z Ludźmi, czyli jak Statystowałem i Recenzowałem), Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 1995;
- Ich, der Friseur und die anderen (Ja, Łebski Fryzjer i Inni), Postskriptum Verlag, Hannover 1996;
- Rückkehr (Powrót) in: "Landschaften und Luftinseln". dtv München 2000;
- Die verrückten Reisen eines Grenzgängers). Tibor Schäfer Verlag Herne 2000;
- Karfoffelqual (Męka kartoflana), Am Erker, Muenster 200