 | Bibliography:
- Pijany anioł na skrzyżowaniu ulic [The Drunken Angel at the Crossorads] (short stories) Warsaw: Staromiejski Dom Kultury, 1993.
- Chłopaki nie płaczą [Boys Don’t Cry] (novel), Warsaw: Lampa i Iskra Boża, 1996.
- Bildungsroman (novel), Kraków: Zebra, 1997.
- 45 pomysłów na powieść. Strony B singli – 1992-1996 [45 Ideas for a Novel. The B Sides of the Singles, 1992-1996] (fiction), Czarne: Wyd. Czarne, 1998.
- Śmiertelność [Mortality] (novel), Czarne: Wyd. Czarne, 1998.
- Tequila (novella), Warsaw-Wołowiec: Czarna Lampa, 2001.
- Karolina (novel), Wołowiec: Czarne, 2002.
- Nagrobek z lastryko [Terrazzo Tombstone], Wołowiec: Czarne, 2007.
- Gulasz z turula, [Turul Goulash] Wołowiec: Czarne, 2008
- Aleja Niepodległości, Wołowiec: Czarne, 2010
Translations:
Hungarian:
- Turulporkolt [Gulasz z turula], transl. Hermann Péter, Budapest: Európa, 2009
- Műmárvány síremlék [Nagrobek z lastryko], transl. Lajos Pálfalvi, Budapest: Európa, 2011
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Varga Krzysztof(born 1968) is a writer, literary critic, journalist and editorial section editor for Gazeta Wyborcza. He actually made his debut with a collection of short stories entitled The Drunken Angel at the Crossroads(1993), but in authorised bibliographies he invariably claims that his first work appeared three years later, a novel called Boys Don’t Cry. The title is the Polish translation of a forgotten hit by the British pop group, The Cure, and not just by chance. In his fiction Varga likes to refer to what is broadly interpreted as pop culture. He is one of those young Poles who assert that during the decline of communism, when they were entering adulthood, their homeland was Anglo-American rock music. In this novel, which is set in Warsaw at the beginning of the 1990s, there is not a single mention of communism or its recent collapse. The book is about a group of friends who are likeable Warsaw yuppies. Apart from work, they spend their days drinking alcohol, taking soft drugs and picking up attractive girls. As they suddenly approach thirty they do a lot of talking about the passage of time, the decline of the human body and inevitable death. Here too the theme is no accident, because Krzysztof Varga is undoubtedly the greatest hypochondriac in modern Polish literature. The themes of “bodily decay”, ageing and life’s transience appear in all his books, and are most strongly expressed in his later novel, Mortality (1998) and his volume of fiction 45 Ideas for a Novel – The B Sides of the Singles, 1992-1996 (1998). Varga’s second novel is Bildungsroman, in which he returns to his Hungarian roots (he is half-Hungarian by birth). The story is set in Budapest and Warsaw, and the main character is the father of Kristóf (the Hungarian for Krzysztof), who tries to consider and summarise his own life story. But Varga’s greatest acclaim has come from a slim volume entitled Tequila (2001), which could be termed “funereal fiction”. It is a tragi-comic monologue narrated by the main character; while bearing the coffin of a friend who was the percussionist in the band he leads, the narrator thinks about friendship, music, the modern world, and – typically for Varga – transience and death. Varga’s latest novel, Karolina (2002), is also intriguing. The narrator delves into his memory and his imagination, all around himself, to find a woman called Karolina. Sometimes funny and sentimental, sometimes self-ironical, he is really looking for himself, reflecting on his own life and analysing his own experiences.
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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