Półka literacka 2023
Literary Bookshelf 2023

Summary/Abstract: This sketch presents the most interesting / most appreciated by reviewers Polish prose and poetry books published in 2023. Its aim is a kind of summary of what happened on the Polish publishing market in the past year. The author attempts to answer questions about how bestseller lists were shaped and whether the sense of threat caused by, for example, the coronavirus pandemic or the war in Ukraine somehow influenced writers and poets by being reflected in their texts. The idea has been to find out what type of fiction was most readily published and which writers and poets enjoyed the greatest interest from reviewers. The brief analysis and interpretation of the ten prose and poetic works presented here also shows what other commentators on contemporary literary life wrote about them. The selection of books has therefore been based not so much on the author’s subjective feelings, but primarily on their reception. In addition, the aim of the sketch has been to present the publishing diversity and to draw attention to the most popular creative tendencies. Among the authors discussed are Martyna Bunda, Anna Cieplak, Darek Foks, Inga Iwasiów, Marcin Kurek, Bartłomiej Majzel, Zośka Papużanka, Marta Podgórnik, Joanna Roszak and Michał Witkowski – thus, in most cases, authors who are well known to the Polish reading public and who announced their new books in some cases after several years of silence. It is clear from the compilation that the works which were particularly appreciated by (also “professional”) readers were those in which the authors attempted to unite shattered identities, returned to a traumatic past, and tried to put the “here and now” in order. The text falls within the fields of literary studies and literary criticism.

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