White Nights
English world rights (MTO Press), Spanish world rights (Lumen), Arabic world rights (Dar Tashkeel), France (Grasset), Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Ersatz), Hungary (Jelenkor), Greece (Vakxikon), Georgia (Intelekti)
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2024
A finely woven fabric of narratives by a major Polish poet
White Nights is the debut work of prose by acclaimed Polish poet Urszula Honek. At first glance, the volume is made up of standalone short stories about the tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up in the same village in southern Poland. At closer inspection, though, the stories reveal themselves to be intricately intertwined, slotting together to form an overarching narrative.
In sumptuous and lyrical language, Honek tells stories...
White Nights is the debut work of prose by acclaimed Polish poet Urszula Honek. At first glance, the volume is made up of standalone short stories about the tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up in the same village in southern Poland. At closer inspection, though, the stories reveal themselves to be intricately intertwined, slotting together to form an overarching narrative.
In sumptuous and lyrical language, Honek tells stories of poverty, disappointment, tragedy, and despair, but manages to find sources of light in these typically dark themes. Packed with exquisite local detail, the stories are nevertheless clearly couched in a more universal context of meaning.
»In this cruel world, literature is able to discover beauty. Urszula Honek does this masterfully.« Andrzej Stasiuk
»A highly artistic study of death encapsulated in moving stories, [where] the setting seems to be a symbol of a larger (ultimately, cosmic) universe, signalled by a reality that is limited to a small number of characters…Honek reveals the bright side of something that is usually only known and seen through darkness.« Paulina Subocz-Białek
»Lyricism and brutality. The almost poetic beauty and trivial ugliness of everyday life. And everything is wrapped in a web of sadness and melancholy. The author knows how to create a mood and shows, to put it grandiosely, sensitivity to the human condition.« Anna Kozłowska, SwipeTo
»With complete cruelty, but also mastery, Honek symbolically kills her influences. She stands firmly on her own two feet, moving readers with her own voice - immediately clear, set and full.« Paulina Małochleb, Empik Critics' Choice
»In this cruel world, literature is able to discover beauty. Urszula Honek does this masterfully.« Andrzej Stasiuk
»A...