Szczepan Twardoch was born in 1979 in Pilchowice in the Polish province of Silesia[Wojew\u00f3dztwo \u015bl\u0105skie] (Wojew\u00f3dztwo \u015bl\u0105skie). He belongs to a Polish Silesian minority. Twardoch studied sociology and philosophy in Katowice. He came to literary writing while writing his master’s thesis on the French Revolution. The central question he asked himself was how European history would have been like if the revolution had broken out in Vienna instead of Paris.<\/p>\n\n
In his subsequent novels, Twardoch concentrates primarily on Polish history. He made his breakthrough with the novel \u00bbMorfina\u00ab [2012; tr: Morphine], which became an international success and was awarded the Paszport Polityki Prize, the Nike Audience Award, and the Ko\u015bcielski Prize. The takes place in Warsaw at the end of the 1930s, after the German invasion, and focuses on a reserve officer. He lives an extravagant lifestyle as a bon vivant and ultimately, almost accidentially, becomes a resistance fighter. \u00bbIn this great anti-front novel, Twardoch also poses the central question of his writing: Is there a meaning to history? Or does everything remain as it has always been, because institutions evolve but not people? Aren’t ideologies pure monsters that drive people into a unification that is alien to their nature?\u00ab [\u00bbFAZ\u00ab]. [FAZ] <\/p>\n\n
Twardoch’s Silesia novel \u00bbDrach\u00ab, published in 2014, for which the author and his translator Olaf K\u00fchl received the 2016 Br\u00fccke Berlin Literature and Translation Prize, once again deals with historical events \u2013 from the Middle Ages to the uprisings of the 1920s, from the Second World War and forced Polonization after 1945 to the present day. In the novel, the earth appears as the exclusive witness to historical events. <\/p>\n\n
Twardoch’s novel \u00bbKr\u00f3l\u00ab [2017; Eng. \u00bbThe King of Warsaw\u00ab, 2020], which tells the story of the rise of the Jewish underworld king Jakub Shapiro, is set in Warsaw during the interwar years. The following novel \u00bbKr\u00f3lestwo\u00ab [2018; tr: Kingdom] keeps the story going. In Warsaw, after the German attack in 1939, Shapiro takes up arms in a hopeless struggle. His small empire and his family are shattered, and the cost of survival in the Warsaw ghetto is high.<\/p>\n\n
\u00bbPokora\u00ab [2020; tr: Humility] deals with the identity conflict of a miner’s son after the end of the First World War, during the revolutionary turmoil in Berlin and the unrest in Upper Silesia. <\/p>\n\n
His most recent novel \u00bbCho\u0142od\u00ab [2022; tr: Cold] works with editorial fiction. The diary of Konrad Widuch falls into the hands of a writer named Szczepan Twardoch: once an enthusiastic Russian revolutionary, Widuch ended up in the Gulag under Stalin, but managed to escape and found refuge with a people living on the outskirts of society. A literary work \u00bbthat is a journey through Europe’s collective unconscious and at the same time a great roman \u00e1 clef for the present\u00ab [\u00bbNZZ\u00ab]. <\/p>\n\n
\u00bbDie Nulllinie\u00ab [tr: Flatline], a volume of reportage about Ukraine, where he supports the soldiers on the front line, will be published at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n\n
In 2019, Szczepan Twardoch received the German-Polish Samuel Bogumi\u0142 Linde Prize, among many other awards. He lives in Pilchowice and Warsaw.<\/p>\n\n
As of May 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78675,"template":"","jct-role":[1080],"jct-origin":[509],"jct-ilb-years":[614,616,906],"class_list":["post-41419","authors","type-authors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","jct-role-author","jct-origin-poland","jct-ilb-years-2020-en","jct-ilb-years-2022-en","jct-ilb-years-2024-en"],"yoast_head":"\n