7 October 2013 Invitation to a meeting with Joanna Bator
Joanna Bator – a winner of the NIKE Literary Award for her novel Ciemno, prawie noc [Dark, Almost Night] – will meet her readers soon in Krakow. We would like to invite you on Monday (the 21st of October) at 4.30 p.m. to the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology (ul. Konopnickiej 26). The event will, of course, be held within the Conrad Festival.
Joanna Bator was born in 1968 in Wałbrzych. She has written a number of academic papers, essays, novels and short stories. She spent many years in Japan. She received the Beata Pawlak award for the book Japoński wachlarz [The Japanese Fan] (2004, extended edition by W.A.B. in 2011). In 2009, the W.A.B. publishing house released her novel Piaskowa Góra [Sandy Mountain] which was nominated for the NIKE and Gdynia awards, while a year later, the book's sequel, Chmurdalia [Cloudalia], found itself within the finalist group of the NIKE award's subsequent edition. Piaskowa Góra has been translated into German and Hungarian, while Croatian, Macedonian and Israeli editions of the book are being prepared.
Ciemno, prawie noc is a story of a reporter, Alicja Tabor, who comes back to Wałbrzych, the town of her childhood. Alicja settles in an old empty German house from which she had set off to see the world. She learns that children have been going mission for several months while the residents of Wałbrzych seem to be acting in a strange way. Discontent is spreading, acts of violence against animals are more and more frequent and finally a prophet, Jan Kołek, appears and claims that Our Lady of Sorrows spoke to him in a bootleg mining spot. After his death, a group of revolting residents gathers around a self-proclaimed “son”, Jerzy Łabędź. Alicja is supposed to write a reportage on three missing children but her return to Wałbrzych is also a return to her own family drama: her parents’ death and the suicide of her beautiful older sister who was fascinated with the legend of princess Daisy and the Książ castle. Her attempts to solve the mystery of Andżelika, Patryk and Kalinka are accompanied by exploring secrets from Alicja’s own past.
The NIKE Literary Awards is considered to be the most prestigious award for best book of the year. The prize was awarded for the 17th time. The competition is open to all literary genres but only to living authors. The competition’s main objective is to promote Polish literature, especially novels. Thus far, the NIKE winners have included: Czesław Miłosz, Stanisław Barańczak, Tadeusz Różewicz, Jerzy Pilch, Joanna Olczak-Roniker, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Wojciech Kuczok, Andrzej Stasiuk, Dorota Masłowska, Olga Tokarczuk, Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, Tadeusz Słobodzianek, Marian Pilot and Marek Bieńczyk. The NIKE Literary Award was founded by Gazeta Wyborcza and the Agora Foundation.
