Wiesław Myśliwski
Wiesław Myśliwski is the only writer to have twice received the Nike Prize, Poland’s most prestigious literary award: in 1997 for his novel Horizon and again in 2007 for A Treatise on Shelling Beans. He worked as an editor at the People’s Publishing Cooperative and at the magazines Regiony and Sycyna. In addition to the Nike Prize, Myśliwski has received the Stanisław Pietak Prize, the Arts Ministry Prize, the State Prize, the Reymont Prize, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, and the Golden Sceptre Award.
Wiesław Myśliwski’s seventh novel, Needle’s Eye, presents a memory of an ancient gate in the writer's hometown of Sandomierz, Poland. You can see the halation, that salty glow of daylight memories, right from the outset. An elderly man muses on love and says he will give the narrator his life, only to collapse down flights of stairs, lifeless. The ensuing investigation will remind readers of Kafka, but there is an escalating doubt and pervasive confusion that put me in the mind of Ferenc Karinthy’s excellent novel Metropole. As the narrative tumbles forward, the diffusion of time and memory swells. Characters speak like people speak in dreams, paying out chains of semi-logic that assume profound weight in the moment. The undeniable brilliance of this work, and the other Myśliwski books I've read, makes me suspect he’s not far from being the sort of obscure Central European writer who shocks everyone and wins a Nobel.