Kiedy będziesz gotowy, idź

Wojciech Gunia keeps his readers constantly off-balance in this excellent collection of short stories, as he leads them into mysterious worlds, where the protagonists are confused, disorientated, and often disappointed. It is a place inhabited by traumatised people trying their best to function with little help or support. Child narrators have parents who are absent, ailing or deceased; or if not, follow rigid codes of conduct, are emotionally distant and lacking in empathy.

In the first, Kafka-adjacent story, a female victim of domestic abuse is fixated on spiders. Other tales include a warehouse worker trying to find the truth about an abandoned factory against a grim, industrial backdrop; a boy losing his brother in a monstrous inflatable park; a wounded soldier fighting to survive in extreme conditions; a boy and his sister forced to make life-defining choices following the deaths of their parents in their remote backwoods home.

Although Gunia’s worlds are often lonely, hopeless places, the author also reveals a dark sense of humour. The theme of a journey recurs. But rather than being a voyage of discovery, it will most likely be the stuff of nightmares, as certainties vanish and protagonists head deeper into the unknown, trying to make sense of what is around them.

When You’re Ready, Go will be a joy to translate. Gunia’s prose is elegant, vivid and punchy, and he has a beautifully rich vocabulary.