Stanisław Aleksander Nowak

(b. 1958) – a journalist, prose writer and dramaturg; graduated in the political sciences from the University of Wrocław and foreign trade at the Academy of Economics in Wrocław.

He has been a columnist for Słowo Polskie, Gazeta Wrocławska and Wieczór Wrocławia. Nowak worked for eight years on ‘Galicyanie’ (Galicians), his novel debut. Published in 2016, it is a modern epic of the history of the Kończyświat family against a backdrop of a Central European village under Austrian rule. Magical realism combines with a classical family saga; over the book’s 900 pages, the reader admires the beauty of his refined, archaic language.

Of his work, the author says: ‘When I grew up, I decided that Zaborów’s people deserved a novel. The idea was as original as it was bold: I’d write a saga and an epic encompassing the history of Galicia in the Austrian partition zone’.

Nowak has won several literary competitions, including the Poznań Sceny na Piętrze contest (for his tragicomedy ‘Szkoła Katów’ [School for Executioners]) and the University of Gdańsk competition (for a fragment of his epic, Galicians). In 2017 he received the City of Warsaw Literary Award in the prose category and a nomination for the Angelus Central European Literary Award (his debut novel was among the seven finalists for the prize).