The release party will take place at Mount Florida Books in Glasgow, and is scheduled for the 6th November, starting at 7pm local time. The Polish author will participate - and joining Honek in conversation will be a Glasgow-based valued Mexican poet and translator, Juana Adcock, featured on "Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019" list.
"White Nights" is a series of interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the southern Poland region of Beskid Niski. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them.
The author relates to the reader with the sincerest care and honesty - a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard. Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.
"A highly artistic study of death encapsulated in moving stories, [where] the setting seems to be a symbol of a larger (ultimately, cosmic) universe, signalled by a reality that is limited to a small number of characters… Honek reveals the bright side of something that is usually only known and seen through darkness" - a literary critic Paulina Subocz-Białek wrote about "White Nights" in her review.
Urszula Honek, born in Racławice, Poland, is the author of three poetry books and a short story collection. She is the winner and recipient of several prestigious prizes and grants in Poland. Most recently, she received the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Prize in 2020, and the Adam Włodek Prize in 2021. "White Nights" was nominated for both Polityka's Passport Award and the Grand Continent Prize in 2022 - and has recently been nominated for the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Prize and the Conrad Award, in 2023. "White Nights" was also recently awarded the 2023 Kościelski Prize, by the Geneva-based Kościelski Foundation - previously won by esteemed writers like Alicia Iwańska, Jolanta Stefko and Olga Tokarczuk, among others.
Tickets for the event are free - but must be booked in advance.
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Source: Polish Cultural Institute, Mount Florida Books