Anna Bolecka

(b. 1951) – writer, essayist, historian of literature.

After graduating in Polish studies at the University of Warsaw, Bolecka started work as editor of contemporary Polish literature at the “Czytelnik” publishing cooperative. She published reviews and excerpts of prose in magazines including “Kresy”, “Dekada Literacka” and “Pogranicze”. She also prepared an edition of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska’s plays.

She debuted under her maiden name (Sikorska) in 1978, with the children’s book “Raku”. Later she continued publishing other works, both for adult readers and children and teens. In 1989 she resigned from her job and devoted her time fully to creative work. In the years 1994-2001 she ran Szpak, her own publishing house in Warsaw. In the 1990s and early 2000s she travelled to Germany for several residencies.

The first book she published under the name Bolecka was the children’s novel “Leć do nieba” (Fly to Heaven), a collection of short narratives set in the 1950s. She gained recognition with the book “Biały kamień” (The White Stone, 1994). In this novel Bolecka refers to the story of her own family, who settled generations on the borderlands of the former Polish Republic, where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews live side by side. This poetic journey into the distant past has an evident therapeutic aspect: the world of Great-grandfather (the protagonist) is something of a paradise lost, a world of peace, harmony and beauty. The narrator envies her own ancestors their simple but noble existence, their cheerfulness, the beautiful surroundings in which they came to live, the calm everyday rhythm, the close connection with nature.

The themes change in her following novel, “Kochany Franz” (Darling Franz, 1999), with a protagonist based on Franz Kafka. The novel features fictional letters between Franz and the people close to him, with a focus on the correspondence that the loner from Prague carried on with women. The author combines facts from Kafka’s intimate biography with themes from the cultural (ethnic, social) context. She particularly studies the complex and ambiguous relationships of her protagonist with the Jewish milieu, and the process of Kafka’s specific re-education. As the reader of Darling Franz follows the protagonist, they enter the world of intriguing topics including Jewish mysticism, the secrets of the Kabbalah, a theatre staging plays in Yiddish. This book, drawing on the old genre of epistolary novel, has a lot of old-fashioned charm and like The White Stone, it’s an encouragement to live in a bygone era for at least a moment. The delighted Tadeusz Nyczek wrote: “Whoever is able to peer deeply into this prose will discover how intricately it weaves together symbolism of earth, life and death, love and betrayal, otherness and identity. If they want, they’ll find a beautifully sustained biblical motif of the sin-tainted love between Adam and Eve, with the devil-snake playing its part […] It’s been a long time since I’ve read prose of such crystalline flawlessness, one which sparks almost physical pleasure”.

After another novel for children, “Latawce” (Kites), about the mystery of an old manor house, Bolecka turned exclusively towards adult readers, perhaps mostly female ones. In her book “Concerto d’amore”, set in modern-day Warsaw, the main theme is love; she combines romance plots with amorous motifs rooted in mythology. Her subsequent works depict people facing misfortunes: “Uwiedzeni” (The Seduced) – with a plot set in Vienna, Munich and Gdańsk – shows people who are unhappy in different ways and for various reasons (a homeless person, a drug addict, a stigmatic, a Nazi). In “Cadyk i dziewczyna” (The Tzaddik and the Girl), the author returns to the times of World War II and contemplates human reactions to peril, using, among others, the diaries and letters of the Dutch Jew Etta Hillesum. Her next books were, again, journeys into the past, to the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, inspired by her own family memories. When Katarzyna, the protagonist of “Medalion z ametystem” (The Amethyst Locket), realises that her husband will not return from America and she has to support their four children alone, she rents out part of her flat to lodgers. She is forced to face problems that, as a woman, she hasn’t been taught to solve, binding her instead with proprieties and condemning her to helplessness. This novel of society and manners masterfully depicts the atmosphere and reality of Warsaw at the turn of the previous century: artists from the Young Poland movement talk in the living room, there are mentions of the ideas of the era and its famous figures, and the next century brings new achievements and dangers. These themes return in the novel “Medalion z perłą” (The Pearl Locket), in which the main characters – this time, living in the 1920s – also have to deal with various challenges.

The White Stone won the Władysław Reymont Literary Award in 1995. The novel Darling Franz received the Warsaw Literary Premiere “Best Book of October 1999” title. In 2000, Bolecka received the 1999 Polish PEN Club Award for her prose writing.