Jarosław Maślanek

(b. 1974) – a prose writer and journalist.

Maślanek was educated in political science. He co-edited the weekly Polish Real Estate Market magazine, published since 1999 and devoted to the investment market. He mainly covered the economy, but also wrote for Polityka. In 2009, he participated in the European Festival of Debut Novels in Kiek. Maślanka’s first novel was ‘Haszyszopenki’ (Hashichopins, 2008). After its release, he published novels and short stories in Polish short-story anthologies.

Maślanek writes psychological prose that describes traumas and nasty behaviour, in which the same motifs and themes obsessively recur: families falling apart, children who are psychologically abused or abandoned, all sorts of dysfunctional relationships, the messiness of small local communities. The setting of Maślanek’s first novel is an unnamed rural town, which, owing to politico-socio-economic changes, is gradually collapsing. The protagonists of Hashichopins, a coming-of-age novel, are two twelve-year-old boys, left to their own devices by their parents and persecuted by their peers for being different; they retreat to a world of fantasy and games with the world and other people. These games become more and more cruel and dangerous. In ‘Apokalypsis ’89’ (Apocalypsis ‘89), Maślanek creates a portrait of a person for whom the transformation of 1989 meant the collapse of his private world, as he was unable to cope with the newfound freedom, he could not take responsibility for his own life. To use a term from the novel, this protagonist is ‘evasive’; instead of facing what life brings, he takes a strategy of avoidance, he retreats into alcohol and inertia, which leads to his downfall.

In his later novels, Maślanek drew from a genre that, while popular, is seldom found in Polish prose. ‘Ferma ciał’ (The Body Farm) is a horror of sorts, which is all the more terrifying in that it has nothing unrealistic. This is the story of the economic causes of human bonds falling apart, of a fracturing society, and also the limitations we put on ourselves in seeking the illusion of security.

‘Liczby ostatnie’ (Final Numbers) is also pessimistic in content. In this novel, the protagonist takes us into a civilisation on the verge of collapse. A landslide of climate and politico-economic changes, individuals losing subjecthood, an all-powerful cyberstate – these are the elements of the dystopian reality found in this prose.

In his most recent novel (‘Klekot tysięcy patyków’ [The Rattle of Thousands of Sticks]), Maślanek seems to depart from the socio-economic diagnoses, towards a more personal narrative. A story told by a dying woman to her son is a pretext to contemplate the fact that death is the beginning of every new life, and every end is a beginning. The questions haunting the protagonist build tension between memory and identity, past and history, truth and falsity. The narrative weaves in other texts: newspaper clippings, letters, memoirs, dialogues from documentary films, articles, materials found on the grounds of an abandoned factory.

Maślanek’s prose has moved from creating failed protagonists and analysing their psyches against a backdrop of Polish history of the past decades, to deeper socio-economic diagnoses and philosophical reflections and examinations of personal relationships (in his recent works).

In 2019, he was nominated for the EU Prize for Literature.