Ignacy Karpowicz

Prose writer, translator from English, Spanish and Amharic, traveller. Studied at the University of Warsaw (Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities), focusing mainly on Iberian and African studies. Travelled through Central America and East Africa, lived in Costa Rica and Ethiopia. During his stay in South America, he wrote Niehalo, his debut novel, for which he was nominated for a Passport award in Polityka magazine. Since 2002, he has been collaborating with the FA-art magazine. In 2007, his second novel, Cud, was published, followed by the third – Nowy Kwiat cesarza (i pszczoły), for which he was awarded the Wiesław Kazanecki prize. In 2007, he was granted the Homines Urbani international open scholarship for young writers, translators and literary critics, as well as a scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. In 2009, another of his novels was published, Balladyny i romanse, for which he was granted the 2010 Passport ward by Polityka magazine. His latest book was described by Przemysław Czapliński as “...the most twisted novel of the entire first decade of the 21st century” and “a liberation novel that is amusingly pornographic and piercingly subtle”. Karpowicz is also interested in military technology, such as ships, planes and tanks, and would like to translate a volume of Ethiopian fairy tales from Amharic to Polish.Picture: G. Dąbrowski