Mirosław Nahacz

(1984–2007) – a prose and script writer.

He made his debut in 2003 with a coming-of-age generational novel Osiem cztery (Eight Four), in which he depicted a group of teenagers on the verge of adulthood, making key decisions for their later lives. He described a series of parties and meetings, trying to show the reader young people’s lifestyle in the early twenty-first century in frank language. Nahacz’s next novel, Bombel (2004), was totally different stylistically and thematically. The young author was inspired, on the one hand, by the work of Andrzej Stasiuk, on the other, by Czech prose. The novel’s main protagonist of the novel is a rural drunk named Bombel, who spends days at a time sitting at a bus stop. He tells a comic-melancholy tale of life in the provinces, narrating stories of marginalised people and a world of constant shortage. In ‘Bocian i Lola’ (The Stork and Lola, 2006), in turn, Nahacz made a stylistic shift, creating what the critics called ‘hallucinogenic prose’. The complex and enigmatic action of the novel hovers between dream and waking, truth and invention, reality and narcotic vision. The protagonists helplessly drift between various levels of the novel, making attempts to determine the ontological status of the worlds in which they find themselves and discover their identities.

He did not manage to publish his last book, ‘Niezwykłe przygody Roberta Robura’ (The Incredible Adventures of Robert Robur), during his lifetime. The novel was released by Prószyński i S-ka in 2009, two years after the author’s tragic suicide. In 2016, Rozmaitości Theatre in Warsaw staged Robert Robur directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski, an adaptation of his book.

Nahacz contributed to Filipinka and Lampa, he also co-authored the script for the series ‘Egzamin z życia’ (An Exam in Life). In 2003, he was singled out for the Natalia Gall and Ryszard Pollak Literary Foundation Award.