30 June 2014 Pilch – a laureate of the Gdynia Literary Prize
Jerzy Pilch is the winner of this year's, already the 9th, Gdynia Literary Prize, in the prose category, for the book entitled Wiele demonów [Many Demons] (Wielka Litera publishing company, Warsaw). The plot of the novel is set in the post-Stalinist period of the 1950s in the Lutheran region of Cieszyn Silesia.
- The is not any sacrosanct prose, but rather a theological detective novel (...). It tells us about the dark lining fabric of life, complicated and demonic, but not entirely far from salvation – the jury explains. Paweł Szwed, the editor-in-chief of the publishing company, received the prize on behalf of the writer.
The books nominated in the prose category included: Do szpiku kości. Ostatnia powieść awangardowa [To the Marrow. The Last Avant-Garde Novel] by Krzysztof Jaworski (Biuro Literackie), Miedza [The Baulk] by Andrzej Muszyński (Czarne), Ludzka rzecz [A Human Thing] by Paweł Potoroczyn (W.A.B.), and Nocne zwierzęta [Nocturnal animals] by Patrycja Pustkowiak (W.A.B.).
The Gdynia Literary Prize was established in 2006 by the Mayor of Gdynia, Wojciech Szczurek, in order to honour the exceptional achievements of the living Polish authors. It is awarded on annual basis to the authors of the best books published in the previous year. This year, a record-breaking number of 426 books were proposed as candidates for the Gdynia Literary Prize. It was about 87 more than in the previous year. The jury chaired by Małgorzata Łukasiewicz was composed of Agata Bielik-Robson, Marek Bieńczyk, Jerzy Jarniewicz, Zbigniew Kruszyński, Jacek Gutorow, Aleksander Nawarecki and Violetta Trella.
