Jerzy Pilch

The same year, Pilch published his third novel Inne rozkoszy ("Other pleasures"), the first to appear in English (as His Current Woman, 2002) (see external links).

Pilch's most successful book so far is his fourth novel Pod Mocnym Aniołem ("The Strong Angel Inn", 2000), a satirical take on the "drinking novel" genre, which was awarded a Nike Award, the prestigious Polish literary award, the following year. In 2009, it was translated into English as The Mighty Angel, and in 2010, Tysiąc spokojnych miast was also translated as A Thousand Peaceful Cities.

Pilch quit his work for Tygodnik Powszechny in 1999, left the Kraków scene entirely, and settled down in Warsaw, where he began to write a column for the weekly Polityka. A collection of texts from this series was published as Upadek człowieka pod Dworcem Centralnym ("The Fall of Man in front of the Central Station") in 2002.

Pilch's second novel, Spis cudzołożnic ("List of Adulteresses", 1993), tells the story of a failed eccentric writer guiding a foreign guest on a tour of Kraków and through a curio collection of national myths and the absurd socialist realities of the 1980s. In 1995, actor Jerzy Stuhr made the novel into a film as his directing debut (under the international title List of Lovers).

In 1989 Pilch began to contribute highly popular satirical essays for the Kraków-based liberal Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, which established him as a public intellectual. Pilch's best essays from his column in Tygodnik Powszechny appeared in three collections entitled Rozpacz z powodu utraty furmanki ("Despair caused by the loss of a wagon", 1994), Tezy o głupocie, piciu i umieraniu ("Theses on stupidity, drinking and dying", 1995), and Bezpowrotnie utracona leworęczność ("The irreversible loss of left-handedness", 1998).

Also in 1989, he was conferred the renowned Kościelski Award for his debut novel Wyznania twórcy pokątnej literatury erotycznej ("Confessions of an author of illicit erotic literature"), an ironic insider's account of the Kraków art scene.

Born and raised in the small town of Wisła in the Beskids in southern Poland, Pilch studied Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and became active in the city's underground literary scene in the late 1970s. He began making his name under the martial law in the 1980s, by writing and reading essays for the "spoken magazine" Na Głos ("Out loud"), a regular spoken-word event organised by the oppositional Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej ("Club of Polish Catholic Intellectuals") (even though Pilch himself is Lutheran).

Jerzy Pilch (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjɛʐɨ ˈpilx] ; born 10 August 1952 in Wisła, Poland) is a Polish writer, columnist, and journalist. Critics have compared Pilch's style to Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera, or Bohumil Hrabal.