“Silesian tale” wins Poland’s top literary prize as ceremony hit by protests over border crisis

Poland’s top annual literary prize, which is this year celebrating its 25th edition, has been awarded to writer and journalist Zbigniew Rokita for his book of reportage on the Upper Silesia region.

The Nike Literary Award is given annually for the best book published in Polish over the last year. Previous recipients have included two Nobel Prize winners, Czesław Miłosz and Olga Tokarczuk (twice).

This year’s ceremony was also marked by protest against and criticism of the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, with attendees and jurors holding up signs reading “Where are the children?” in reference to a group of families pushed back into Belarus by the Polish authorities.

Rokita’s book is entitled Kajś, which means “somewhere” in the Silesian ethnolect. Its subtitle, “A Tale of Upper Silesia”, refers to the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, which is located mostly in Poland and partly in the Czech Republic.

The region, known as a centre of coal mining and for its distinct cuisine, also retains German influences, having been under German rule at various stages in its history.

In the foreword to the book, the author confesses that for most of his life he considered Silesians to be “cavemen with a pickaxe and roulade” and suppressed his own Silesian identity.

“I knew little about my roots,” he writes. “I didn’t believe that Silesia had had any history before the war. My ancestors were as if from another planet, with impossible names: Urban, Reinhold, Lieselotte. I decided to wander around the area a bit and try to put it together.”

“And what did I find? Almost a million people declaring a ‘non-existent’ nationality, an environmental catastrophe of unknown proportions, a tale of a Polish colony, separatisms and people supporting the wrong national team.”

The jury hailed Kajś for covering an important subject with the “courage to confront unobvious points of view” as well as a “linguistic, narrative fluidity”. It is a book that “helps to understand the violent nature of official history” and “a record of everyday life in which human goodness plays a lifesaving role”.

Rokita said he was “moved” by the award. “I dream of the voice of the Silesian men and women, but also all diverse minorities, being more audible,” he said when accepting the readers’ prize.

Former prime minister and current MEP Leszek Miller joined the congratulations for Rokita, noting that he had received his copy of the book from his parliamentary colleague Łukasz Kohut, who last year baffled European Parliament interpreters by switching to Silesian during a debate.

“I couldn’t tear myself away from it,” Miller wrote on Twitter “I heartily recommend it to everybody thirsty for reportage at its best.”

The situation of people crossing the Polish-Belarusian border, and particularly the fate of children sent back by the Polish authorities, cast a shadow over the award ceremony, with cards held up by audience members reading “Where are the children?” followed by names and ages.

“We would like this to be a happy evening, but these questions you ask on the cards are not matters that can be left outside the door, they are matters that we are all opposed to – questions without answers and whose answers must be found,” said Grażyna Torbicka, who was presenting the event.

Several nominees also referred to the situation in their speeches. Aleksandra Lipczak read an open letter from the Families without Borders group calling for humanitarian organisations to be allowed into the area covered by the current state of emergency on the border and for an end to “deportations of refugees into the forest”.

“As mothers, as families, as people we appeal above political divides to the mothers, families and people with an influence over the decisions concerning the eastern border,” Lipczak read. “We cannot allow children in our country to be transported to death in the forest.

Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Gazeta

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.