As a translator of Polish literature, I sometimes put my fellow Britons on the spot by asking if they can name a Polish author they’ve read, and the most frequent answer is Joseph Conrad. Luckily for us, he wrote in English. But we also have excellent translations available, capturing the humour and humanity across the breadth of Polish literature. Here’s a selection of the best, taking you from a remote village to the essence of human existence.
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A Treatise on Shelling Beans by Wiesław Myśliwski, trans. Bill Johnston
A retired musician tells his life story to an enigmatic stranger as they shell beans. Myśliwski’s outwardly ordinary narrator has had a colourful life: a happy country childhood disrupted by war, confinement in a vile orphanage, jobs as an electrician helping to rebuild the nation and as the sax player in a travelling dance band, and finally a return home to his village. His anecdotes gather in waves of rising poignancy, only to crash with comical bathos.
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The Elephant by Sławomir Mrożek, trans. Konrad Syrop
Mrożek was a master satirist, writing around the censor through the medium of absurdity. These anarchic parables cock a snook at the equally absurd humbug of communist authority, though their sinister comedy could apply to any form of totalitarianism. Here, the lion at the Colosseum refuses to eat the Christians, because who knows if the Christians won’t come to power soon? And when some innocent children are punished because their snowman is seen as an act of subversion, the children become subversives themselves.
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The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Jennifer Croft
The Nobel laureate’s historical epic fictionalises the life of Jacob Frank, the bizarre but influential self-proclaimed messiah whose dedicated worshippers followed him around 18th-century Europe. This visionary novel re-creates his world in vivid, sensual detail, and can be read on many levels: as a history book exploring the development of Europe’s religions and philosophies, as a scrapbook of esoteric arcana such as alchemy and the Kabbalah, or the story of a rebel and his bewitched associates.
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The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuściński, trans. William Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand
Kapuściński was the father of Polish reportage, which describes societies through the accounts of their most humble citizens in literary, not newspaper, style. This mesmerising portrait of the fall of Haile Selassie, based on conversations with his courtiers, was criticised for factual embroidery, but perhaps it’s a veiled denunciation of Poland’s communist regime? Either way, who wouldn’t want to believe in the courtier who wiped the dignitaries’ shoes with a satin cloth when the Emperor’s lapdog peed on them?
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View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wisława Szymborska, trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
These poems are pearls of wisdom. I recommend reading one a day, like a supplement to fortify the soul. No one sums up the human condition better or with subtler humour. Here’s a small dose to hook you:
Breughel’s Two Monkeys
This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.
The exam is the history of Mankind.
I stammer and hedge.
One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away –
but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say
he prompts me with a gentle
clinking of his chain.
• Warsaw Tales, a short-story anthology translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is published by Oxford University Press on 12 September. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
