Magdalena Parys

(b. 1971) – a Polish-German writer, reporter and columnist.

She made her debut in 2001 in the literary magazine Pogranicza, which published her poems, short stories, essays and reviews. In 2011, she released her first book, ‘Tunel’ (The Tunnel, part one of the ‘Berlin Trilogy’), which was enthusiastically received by the critics and considered one of the most important debuts of that year. This novel led to her representing Poland at the European Festival of Debuts in Kiel and Berlin.

The Tunnel is a novel with a deep inclination toward reportage, even if the realities it portrays (Berlin after World War Two, the division of the city, the Cold War era) are only a pretext for discovering the mysteries and personal dramas of the protagonist’s family. A particularly fascinating plot in The Tunnel is how it shows how people in power can adapt to new conditions after s diametrical shift in the politico-economic system. Another fascinating subject – handled by the author in a marvellous, detective-thriller style – is the German east/west divide, with Poland in the wings. In the course of a few months, The Tunnel went through several editions and was positively reviewed in France and in Belgium.

In 2014, Magdalena Parys published a multilayered political thriller, ‘Magik’ (The Magician, part two of the aforementioned ‘Berlin Trilogy’), mostly devoted, much like the previous one, to Polish-German relations (the setting is Berlin, Warsaw and Sofia), in which she intriguingly and precisely describes both the ‘Bulgarian traces’ in the Stasi’s criminal activities and, above all, in compelling detail, tells of the everyday lives and tangled fates of Poles in Berlin. The novel was translated into many languages. The French edition (Le Magicien) had an overwhelmingly positive response: Le Monde compared Magdalena Parys’s prose to Thomas Mann’s, and L’Obs called her ‘one of the most important writers of the post-communist epoch’. In 2019, she took part in the Paris Book Fair as a guest of honour.

Published in 2020, ‘Książę’ (The Prince) is surely the darkest of the ‘Berlin Trilogy’ books. In the closing part of the saga, Parys mainly addresses the rebirth of nationalism: she analyses the political reality, evocatively shows revitalisation of neo-Nazi movements and the ways in which they try to take power, manipulating young people along the way.

Magdalena Parys has received numerous awards and distinctions for her work, including: the Polonia Golden Owl awarded by the Polish Intelligentsia Club in Vienna for her novel The Tunnel (2013), the European Union Literary Award for The Magician (2015), a nomination for the French booksellers’ award Le prix Libr’à nous (2018), Prix littéraire de la ville de Quimper (2019), and a nomination for the Grand Calliber Award, a nomination for the Golden Missile Award in the best historical detective novel category, and a Golden Missile Award for The Prince (2021).