Zbigniew Mentzel

(b. 1951) – a prose writer, journalist and columnist.

He made his debut in 1972 with an article, ‘Polowanie bibliofila’ (‘A Bibliophile’s Hunt’), published in Polityka. In the 1970s, he edited the same weekly, publishing a satirical chronicle of the cultural scene, ‘Pod kreską. Ostatnie kwartały PRL’ (Past the Line: The Last Months of Communist Poland). He also put out his prose, columns and articles in Twórczość and Kultura, among others. In the 1980s, he worked with the émigré Puls publishing house in London and its Puls quarterly magazine. As an investor he worked with the stock market magazine Parkiet, where he published columns. As a columnist, he also worked with Gazeta Wyborcza, Przekrój, Tygodnik Powszechny and Plus Minus, which was a Rzeczpospolita supplement.

He released a few collections of short prose which defy genre. ‘Laufer’ (Bishop) and ‘Niebezpieczne narzędzie w ustach’ (A Dangerous Tool in the Mouth) are filled with opinion pieces, mini-essays, autobiographical notes, a variety of voices and the germs of literary plots. The thematic range of these miniatures is impressive: from private matters to politics or economics. In 2005, he released his fist novel, ‘Wszystkie języki świata’ (All the Languages of the World). The setting is Warsaw in the late 1990s, and takes place in a single day. The main protagonist has to help his father get to an important celebration to say farewell to his workplace and his fellow employees. This event stirs memories. The protagonist recalls scenes from his childhood (the 1950s and 60s) and early youth, exposes family secrets, speaks of his relationship with family. But most important to this novel is its metaphorical level. The title refers to the protagonist’s personal failure – despite his concerted efforts, he has never managed to master a foreign language. It is not practical ability he is after, but mastery of a language in a literary sense. The protagonist longs to express himself, but he gradually finds that he cannot do this even in his own language. His muteness seems a metaphor for certain unrealized ambitions in a generational sense. All the Languages of the World can be read, therefore, as a novel of the peers of communist Poland, whose youth was spent wasting time, and who are unable to give their lives deeper meaning.

Mentzl’s later novels, ‘Spadający nóż’ (A Falling Knife) and ‘Krzycz! Teraz!’ (Scream! Now!) seem to be autobiographical. The protagonist of the former, Zbigniew M., is grappling with manic depression and a paranoid lack of equilibrium, resulting from the compounded paradoxes of modern life, and the risk of such a life is rendered in a warning: ‘Don’t grab a falling knife!’, which ordinary brokers hear during a stock market crash. But is it only them? In Scream! Now!, Mentzel uses autobiographical themes to write of his early youth, the realities of communism, the nightmares of Martial Law. The anxieties of maturing and his first erotic experiences described with courage and openness are true literary themes.

Zbigniew Mentzel is also the editor and biographer of Leszek Kołakowski. He published three volumes of his scattered works, with his own selection and editing, and thick volumes of his conversations with the professor.

For All the Languages of the World, Mentzel was nominated for the Nike Literary Award (2006). For his biography of Kołakowski, he took the J. Długosz Award for best work in the humanities (2020).