Jerzy Sosnowski

(b. 1962) – a writer, radio and television journalist, reporter, historian of Polish literature and academic teacher.

While taking Polish Studies he was a member of the Independent Students’ Union. Afterwards, he began teaching and academic work at the University of Warsaw, combining this with literary criticism. He published columns in such papers as Gazeta Wyborcza and Więź. In the 1990s, he worked for Polish Television as director of cultural programming. He helped create a culture magazine, Pegaz, and served as head of the humanities programming at TVP Educational Television. In 2000, he began work at Polish Radio: first on the Second Programme, then the Third, where, beginning in 2001 (with a pause in 2007–9), he ran a journalism show, Programme Three Club, Literary Bureau of Investigation and Programme Three Stamp of Quality. He also worked with Polish Television Culture. Since July 2020, he has been tied to Nowy Świat Radio, where he runs the journalism programme Point of View: A Century of Wonders and JerzySounds. He was a member of the Polish Language Council of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2011–18.

In the first half of the 1990s, Jerzy Sosnowski was an active and influential literary critic and journalist, while developing his academic career as an authority on Polish literature at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the end of the 90s, Sosnowski broke with these pursuits. After a few years of silence, he made his debut as a prose writer. In 2001, he released a fantastical novel, ‘Apokryf Agłai’ (The Apocrypha of Aglaia), and a volume of memoirs, ‘Wielościan’ (Polyhedron).

Jerzy Sosnowski is a writer with an impeccable sense of craft, deftly using a range of conventions, able to virtuosically join science fiction with melodrama and thriller, as in The Apocrypha of Aglaia. He is also a modern writer, attuned to the needs of today’s readers. The best proof of this may be the stories gathered in ‘Linia nocna’ (The Night Line). Sosnowski is also a writer of great ambitions. It was probably these aspirations that gave rise to the highly involved novel ‘Prąd zatokowy’ (Bay Current, 2003). This includes key themes in Sosnowski’s writing: settling the score with the modern philosophical/cultural intellectuals and with the present. In the elaborate plot of this novel, the author focuses on philosophical and moral dilemmas which recur in history, albeit in changed contexts.

In his next novels, Sosnowski consistently wove narrative patterns from genre prose with attempts to diagnose the ideological/moral condition of the Poles, chiefly the intellectuals. In ‘Tak to ten’ (That’s the One, 2006), a thrilling mystery plot serves to depict very Polish fears and resentments and ponder the mechanism behind how collective memory and national mythologies are constructed. In ‘Instalacji Idziego’ (Idzi’s Installation, 2009) Sosnowski uses the story of a self-declared prophet consumed by a religious mania to show the condition and specifics of Polish Catholicism in postmodern times. In turn, ‘Spotkamy się w Honolulu’ (We’ll Meet in Honolulu, 2014) ties in to the romance novel, to make a compelling tale of love between seniors. Sosnowski’s essays are an interesting complement to his prose. One example is ‘Ach’ (Ah, 2005), nine pieces that come together to make an interesting, in-depth self-portrait of a Catholic intellectual who grapples with the problem of faith and a complicated approach to institutionalised religion. We should add that Sosnowski declared himself to be a postmodern writer, as seen by his references to mass culture and multiple narrators and narratives.

In 2001, Sosnowski received the Kościelski Foundation Award (for Polyhedron). 2004 brought him a nomination for the Polityka Passport in the Literature category (for Bay Current). In 2006, for took the Złoty Grot Education Promotion Art Association award, in 2009 he was nominated for Master of Polish Speech, in 2011 he was given the Gold Service Cross, in 2016 the Father Józef Tischner Award, and in 2016, a collection of his essays, ‘Co Bóg zrobił szympansom?’ (What Did God Do to the Chimps?), was nominated for the Nike Literary Award.