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Poland

A river with marshes on the left bank and buildings and trees on the right.
The Oder River in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice. Sebastian Wallroth, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A Rolled-up Paper Gun
By Małgorzata Gorczyńska
Western intellectuals lack the historical experience common in other parts of the world.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
MultimediaMultilingual
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist in a 2x3 grid: Mourning a Breast, Elevator in...
The Watchlist: July 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll on six summer reads you won’t want to miss, from a detective thriller banned in Vietnam to a collection of speculative stories from Egypt.
A two-by-six grid of the covers of the six books in the Watchlist: Reinbou, A Whale Is a Country,...
The Watchlist: March 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends six new books in translation you won’t want to miss this month, from Bengali science fiction to an early novel by renowned Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz.
A photograph of Bornholm's rocky seashore and cliff
Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash
Sandvig Beach
By Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki
The next time we went to the beach I had to parade around in a lurid life jacket, looking like a visitor from another planet.
Translated from Polish by Jonathan Baines
Multilingual
A photograph of tombstones covered in autumn leaves and overgrowth in a forest
Photo by Samuel Š on Unsplash
Psalm XCI
By Julia Fiedorczuk
disease came dwelling / now it eats my bread
Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston
Multilingual
A zoo sign with three green elephants and a giant yellow arrow pointing the way
"Oliwa Zoo Giant Road Sign March 2010” by Artur Andrzej. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The Pavilion for Small Mammals
By Patryk Pufelski
I find myself moved by these evenings at the zoo.
Translated from Polish by Dawid Mobolaji
The twelve books featured in the list, in three rows of five
12 Translators Recommend Women in Translation
By Words Without Borders
For Women in Translation Month, a dozen translators recommend recent favorite books written and translated by women.
The covers of the books featured in the August Watchlist: The Details, Lojman, Wenling's, A Practical...
The Watchlist: August 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and exciting reads from Angola, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
The covers of the six titles featured in the Watchlist: Beijing Sprawl, Happy Stories, Mostly,...
The Watchlist: June 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and forthcoming books in translation from Bolivia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Norway, and Poalnd.
Rows of headstones in a cemetery
Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Name Day
By Adam Zagajewski
I wasn’t sure how to pray for the dead / in such tumult, in the shriek of recollection.
Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh
The covers of the books featured in the list
The Best Books of 2022—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2023
By Words Without Borders
Our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they're looking forward to in 2023.
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist
The Watchlist: November 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Denmark, Argentina, Palestine, Mexico, and Poland.
June-2022-Tokarczuk-Ognosia-Flammarion-Engraving Flammarion engraving, unknown artist
Ognosia
By Olga Tokarczuk
We will need new maps as well as the courage and humor of travelers who won’t hesitate to stick their heads outside the sphere of the world-up-to-this-point, beyond the horizon of existing dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft
The covers of the six books featured in the article: Solitaire, I'd Like to Say Sorry But There's...
The Watchlist: February 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Morocco, Argentina, Poland, Chile, Sweden, and Tunisia.
Peripatetics: The Essays of Jazmina Barrera, Karen Villeda, and Mariana Oliver
By Charlotte Whittle
These are essays with a roving gaze whose authors travel through geographic and intellectual spaces with the same ease with which we used to walk around in New York.
Visegrád
By Karen Villeda
Women were confined to reading prayer books and religious hymns. And they wrote in the margins. Centuries went by. Those marginalia are, in fact, the books I need to read.
Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle
Deceptive Simplicity: International Children’s Literature
By Daniel Hahn
I often feel that adults forget what children’s stories are capable of.
Mr. Gimbal’s Incredible Invention
By Justyna Bednarek
The wooden ring looked antique, because, as Mr. Gimbal explained, it was a centuries-old stereoscopic theater.
Translated from Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones
Road Stories: International Writing on Travel
By Susan Harris
Some of the writers here document their own trips, while others invent characters and send them on the road.
Forced Confessions: On True Crime Writing
By Susan Harris
The pieces here map the translation of event into prose—the creation of true crime writing.
Lusia Murdered
By Cezary Łazarewicz
“Must you put on a fur when someone shouts ‘murder'?
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
The Urn
By Marcin Wicha
It's vile to disregard somebody's sense of aesthetics just because they're dead.
Translated from Polish by Marta Dziurosz
Honor Thy Father and Mother: In Mourning
By Susan Harris
All people mourn in their own ways.
Beyond Queer: The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
The contributors to our Queer issues produce narratives that elude facile compartmentalization.
From “Foucault in Warsaw”
By Remigiusz Ryziński
Why was he the one with the keys to Michel Foucault’s apartment?
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
And What If Love Is Stronger? The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
In this troubling context, the need for portrayals of queer lives around the world becomes even more urgent.
Rainbow Families: Four Parents and Two Children
By Karolina Domagalska
Go and find a father for your child.
Translated from Polish by Marta Dziurosz
Doors
By Żanna Słoniowska
“That evening they rang the doorbell . . . . I never saw him again.”
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
War
By Julia Fiedorczuk
The woman looks at the little girl and sees that her fear is as absolute as her joy was before.
Translated from Polish by Anna Zaranko
Playground Archeology
By Maciej Miłkowski
A woman, on the contrary, has nothing to gain from a child.
Translated from Polish by Tul’si Bhambry
MultimediaMultilingual
Good Faith
By Jarek Westermark
Your activities over many years, as we scrupulously observed, did not provide any evidence to suggest you wished to regain your soul.
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
Multimedia
Heniek
By Monika Szydłowska
Heniek always wanted to leave.
Translated by Sean Gasper Bye
The Dynamism of Contemporary Polish Fiction
By Antonia Lloyd-Jones
The authors who appear in this special feature illustrate the diversity and dynamism of modern Polish fiction.
Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons
By Dominic Davies
Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.
People Behaving Badly
By Susan Harris
Many greet the clean slate of a new year by pledging to chalk up only virtue and moderation.
I Don’t Want Much, But I Must Have It All
By Hanna Krall
Once people hear “religious husband,” they lend two thousand on the spot.
Translated from Polish by Ela Bittencourt
The World on Stage: Micro-Plays in Translation
By Sarah Maitland
It is this ready route to the public, and the immediacy of response to some of the most urgent questions of our time, that gives microtheater its enduring appeal.
Love Thy Savior
By Jerzy Lutowski
“Do you want me to humiliate myself and you?”
Translated from Polish by Kevin Windle
The Magazine as Manifesto
By Meghan Forbes
The artistic production of a group of leftist artists, poets, and editors in Central Europe in the interwar period reflects an optimism for a “new Europe.”
Printing: On Layout
By Mieczysław Szczuka & Teresa Żarnowerówna
Translator Duda has upgraded nonsense phrasings with a nod to our digital age, and designer Kwiecień-Janikowski maintains the dynamism of the printed version, but again with a clever nod to our temporal remove.
Translated from Polish by Paulina Duda & Wojtek Kwiecień-Janikowski
Yiddish Literature and the Transnational Republic of Jewish Letters
By Sebastian Schulman
Yiddish literature occupies the precarious position of an informed outsider.
Sing Ladino
By Yankev Glatshteyn
Finegolden radiating, bursting— / Multicoloredthoughtingness.
Translated from Yiddish by Asya Vaisman Schulman
From “Raking Light from Ashes”
By Relli Robinson
Now you’ll be our daughter a little bit too.
Translated from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan
In Praise of an American Egg Wholesaler
By Francis Nenik
American chicken breasts will keep Europe at peace!”
Translated from German by Amanda DeMarco
Multilingual
Fakes
By Sylwia Chutnik
How could anyone accuse Mr. Pawlikowski of something so awful?
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
Painting the Occupation
By Paweł Smoleński
They locked him up for being a Kurd.
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
The Ship-breakers
By Witold Szablowski
If there’s an accident here, a hard hat won’t help.
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Kyrgyzstan: Shade and Shadow
By Andrzej Stasiuk
Armies always leave a mess behind.
Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston
Balm of a Long Farewell
By Marek Huberath
“I thought it was a game, but they ripped my heart out.”
Translated from Polish by Michael Kandel
The Guy Who Bought the World
By Tomasz Różycki
Skyscrapers stab the air, huge fingers / prodding the haze.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
This Is My Room
By Tomasz Różycki
There’s no earth whatsoever / after sunset.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
In the Evening, Love
By Tomasz Różycki
Love leads him on a leash / from bar to bar.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
A Letter to a Young Poet: On Tomasz Różycki
By Paweł Huelle
There is in these poems a beautiful trace of Rilke.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
Peshawar
By Wojciech Jagielski
Leaving Peshawar to enter Afghanistan brought anxiety. Leaving Afghanistan brought joy and homesickness.
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
February 2012 International Graphic Novels Volume Vi Romanticism Krysztof Gawronkiewicz Page Thumbnail
Romanticism
By Krysztof Gawronkiewicz
Regular readers of Words without Borders will remember Otto Bohater, the downbeat Warsaw detective, and his faithful partner, Watson the White Rat, who appeared in an extract from Essence in 2007. Their…
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Ketchup
By Sławomir Mrożek
I burned down the McDonald’s, for the sake of my life
Translated from Polish by Garry Malloy
Multilingual
I Wish I Had a Master
By Julia Fiedorczuk
for one stray word / would mean the fall of kingdoms
Translated from Polish by Benjamin Paloff
Alterity
By Jacek Dehnel
There’s no such thing as comfort for unhappy men.
Translated from Polish by Benjamin Paloff
Multilingual
only i am
By Justyna Bargielska
only i am cruelty-free
Translated from Polish by Katarzyna Szuster
An impressionist oil painting of a country house with trees and a garden in front of it.
"Spring in France" (1890) by Robert William Vonnoh. Wirt D. Walker Fund. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. Public Domain.
Adjectival Poem
By Piotr Sommer
Amazing spring, warm, humid / and full of backlit trees.
Translated from Polish by W. Martin & Christian Hawkey
Multilingual