Jakub Żulczyk

(b. 1983) – writer, screenwriter, journalist.

Jakub Żulczyk was born in Szczytno and is one of the most popular and controversial Polish writers of the young generation. He has been dubbed the Polish Stephen King, or the intellectual grandson of Leopold Tyrmand.  He studied journalism and American studies in Kraków, where he made his debut as a writer. He now lives in Warsaw, where he continues to write novels and work as a columnist. His work has appeared in “Tygodnik Powszechny” and “Dziennik”, and in the magazines “Machina”, “Lampa” and “Exklusiv”. He edited his own column in “Wprost”. He also works as a television journalist; he co-hosted “Redakcja Kultury” (Culture Edit) on TVP2, as well as the programme “Instytut Prosto” on Radio Proxy.

In 2006, he made his debut (which went on to have many reprints) with the novel “Zrób mi jakąś krzywdę” (Do Me Some Harm). In this book, Żulczyk analyses with admirable maturity the predicament of cultural formulas and the tendency towards vacuous consumption of the most banal cultural products. Many readers have listed this novel among their favourite reads. The hallmarks of Żulczyk’s prose are young characters who are defending themselves against adult life, pronounced humour that is sometimes dark or vulgar, and a dangerous blurring of the boundaries between the real world and the one that exists only in the imagination. Although many psychological themes (alienation, refusal to fit in) and cultural themes (misrepresentation of modern life, shallowness of interpersonal relationships) appear in all his novels, what makes each of them new and interesting is the otherness of the world into which the author has the characters escape from their everyday lives. In his debut, it was the world of computer games, while in his second novel (hailed as “the most brutal and honest Polish young adult novel”), it was the wild world of rock music, drugs and sex. The fantasy two-part series consisting of “Zmorojewo” and “Świątynia” (The Temple) combines Slavic mythologies and fairy tales – suitably bloody, as dictated by the tradition of the Brothers Grimm. Meanwhile, the novel “Instytut” (The Institute) is a horror story that plays out inside the terrified minds of a group of people who are unable to leave their flats. In 2014, Żulczyk’s next novel, “Ślepnąc od świateł” (Blinded by the Lights), was published. Although the setting of this book, describing the dirty and corrupt world of Warsaw dealers and corporate employees, seems close to realism, Żulczyk focuses primarily on the world existing in the characters’ heads rather than on the grey streets of the capital.

His latest novel, “Kandydat” (The Candidate), is a book as dynamic as it is engaging. In this political thriller, Żulczyk combines elements of psychological prose with a meditation on the pathologies of power, presenting readers with an extraordinary plot in which the President is haunted by the spectre of Dismas, and the disgraced Reporter tries to regain his position by disclosing controversial materials.

Żulczyk, who has enjoyed growing interest from critics and readers with each subsequent book, is a keen promoter of himself and his work on social media. As comments on Facebook and cultural/literary websites reveal, this is an author who arouses quite extreme emotions – sometimes hatred, other times sincere reverence, but rarely indifference.

Żulczyk has won the Literary Award of the Capital City of Warsaw in the prose category (2018) and the Literary Award of Warmia and Mazury (2017) for the novel “Wzgórze psów” (Hill of Dogs). For “Ślepnąc od świateł”, he was nominated for the Polityka Passport Award and the TVP Kultura “Guarantee of Culture” Award.