Jakub Małecki

(b. 1982) – a prose writer and translator, an economist by education.

Małecki’s work, initially pegged as fantasy literature, gradually evolved towards dramatic prose with elements of the uncanny and horror. His characteristic style clarified in the bestselling and critically acclaimed novel ‘Dygot’ (Shudder).

Małecki is inspired by painting and photography, he uses stories he hears but always joins them with grotesque, surreal or symbolic touches. He also distorts elements of his autobiography: the setting of his works is the old Kuyuvia-Pomeranian Voidvodeship, where the author comes from, or Poznań and Warsaw, where he now lives. As a former analyst and financial advisor, Małecki inserts some of his protagonists in the world of finance – in the credit department of a bank (‘Przemytnik cudu’ [The Smuggler of Miracles], Shudder). His books have many sociological micro-observations, particularly concerning the inhabitants of large blocks of flats (‘Błędy’ [Errors], ‘Dżozef’ [Joseph]) and the transformation of the Polish countryside (especially in Shudder, whose form most closely resembles a saga: the plot goes back before World War II, covering the lives of three generations of Łabendowiczes and Gelds set against tempestuous historical and social change).

The writer populates his works with strong characters, women who have been through a lot, men grappling with addictions and oversensitive children; he particularly portrays the experience of otherness. His protagonists are outsiders, cripples, obsessives (Chwaścior from ‘Ślady’ [Traces], Wiktor the albino from Shudder, Stasio Baryłczak from Joseph). Rejected by their surroundings or abandoning their community by choice, they immerse themselves in an alternate world, often hovering between brilliance and illness or possession. Good and evil also seem in constant battle – in every book, this writer creates a gallery of ethically ambiguous characters.

Małecki intersects human stories, often tinged with horror, dramatic, full of suffering and anxiety. He most often depicts them with a wide-angle lens – from birth to an invariably triumphant death. He introduces surreal aspects, curses or prophecies, but lets in common-sense, far more tragic interpretations of human existence, such as random misfortune. He is fascinated by the notion of fate, chance and series of partly unwitting life decisions, evident in Traces, a book that weaves a portrait into an overriding plot whose genre is hard to define. Blurring the line between fiction and reality is a constant in his prose, especially in the portraits of readers getting lost in their books.

In 2023, the film adaptation of ‘Święta ognia’ (Holiday of Fire) was released, directed by Kinga Dębska and produced by Opus Film.

Małecki received the Śląkfa Award in the Artist of the Year category (2011); Joseph was nominated for the Janusz A. Zajdl Award (2011). In 2016, he won the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award (Gold Distinction) for Shudder, which also got him nominated for the Angelus Central European Literary Award and the Poznań Literary Award. In 2017, he received a nomination for the Nike Literary Award for Traces. In 2020, the translation of ‘Rdza’ (Rust) into Dutch took first place in the booksellers’ recommendations as prepared by the Dutch Blendle website. The same year, the Russian translation of Shudder was nominated for the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award from the Lev Tolstoy Museum, Holiday of Fire was honoured with the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award, and ‘Saturnin’ (The Saturnian) was among the fifty best books of the year according to the editors of Belgium’s DeMorgen magazine. The Saturnian also brought Małecki a nomination for the Dutch Europese Literatuurprijs (2023).