Jerzy Pilch

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

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).

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.

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