Łukasz Orbitowski

(b. 1977) – a prose writer and columnist.

Considered one of Poland’s foremost horror writers, Orbitowski has developed a unique style, joining the horror genre with elements of drama and thrillers. He began with short stories. In the collections ‘Szeroki, głęboki, wymalować wszystko’ (Deep, Wide, Paint It All) and ‘Wigilijne psy’ (The Dogs of Christmas Eve), horror weaves with urban realism, and the action is often set in Krakow. In these collections, the writer built horror through a clash of everyday life and the uncanny.

Over time, Orbitowski began to write novels, such as ‘Tracę ciepło’ (I’m Losing Warmth) and ‘Święty Wrocław’ (Holy Wrocław), in which he explored a world of spectres and mysterious forces beneath the surface of reality. He often strives for ambiguity – it is not always clear if the ghouls and the horror are real, or come from the protagonists’ mental instability. One example is the story ‘Nadchodzi’ (‘It Comes’), where a haunted house might be a real building or a metaphor for trauma. Orbitowski often uses pop-culture motifs and draws from tradition, particularly Polish Romanticism.

In later years, the author gradually abandoned genre prose, in search of new literary challenges. A breakthrough came with his 2015 novel, ‘Inna dusza’ (Another Soul). Its point of departure was a true story about a teenage murderer in a Bydgoszcz high-rise area. On this basis, Orbitowski not only sketched a believable and in-depth picture of Poland in the 1990s, he also raised questions about the root of evil. Readers and critics appreciated the novel as a detached narrative with no stylistic fireworks, a perfect fit for the subject and the main character of the novel.

Orbitowski’s two following novels – ‘Kult’ (The Cult, 2019) and ‘Chodź ze mną’ (Come with Me, 2022) – were also widely praised. The first looks at stories of visions of the Virgin Mary that allegedly took place during Martial Law in the small town of Oława. The second collides two time frames – the story of Helena’s flight to Sweden in the late 1950s and the modern-day fate of her adult son, who, at forty-something years of age, learns a few facts about her adventures and his father.

For Another Soul, Orbitowski was nominated for the Nike Literary prize and the Gdynia Literary Prize in 2016, and received the Polityka Passport. For The Cult he received the City of Warsaw Literary Award. His novel I’m Losing Warmth was nominated for the J. Zajdel Award.