Tag: Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Maciej Hen

Posted on by Ken Cockburn

After our last post about Robert McMillan meeting Jozef Hen, this post is about Basia McMillan meeting Maciej Hen. (Robert and Basia are married; Jozef and Maciej are father and son.)

Basia writes:

“Recently I attend the Polish National Library’s very well attended annual picnic in Warsaw. While there I spent some time talking woth two authors.

“Firstly Zyta Rudzka who has won a number of prestigious prizes for her work – including this year the Nike (comparable to the Booker) for her latest book. She informed me that one of her books, Slicznotka Doktora Josepha, has recently been translated into English by Antonia Lloyd Jones and will be published in the USA next year. Obviously, a possible book for us to read once it becomes available.

“I also talked to Maciej Hen – our second encounter as we had a long meeting with him and Grazyna last year.”

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A Morning with Żanna Słoniowska

Posted on by Krystyna Szumelukowa

Members of Zielony Balonik were delighted to meet with Żanna Słoniowska, the author of The House with the Stained-Glass Window at the Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh on May 26th at an event hosted by Kasia Kokowska of Word Polishers and supported by the Polish Consul General in Edinburgh. 

From left to right:
Grazyna Fremi, Zanna Sloniowska, Krystyna Szumelukowa, Jenny Robertson

Żanna explained that her first novel was the culmination of a long process of living the first part of her life and thinking of its meanings in the embrace of the character of  her home city, Lviv, as it is now known and located in Western Ukraine. The human characters in her story  explore how four generations of women in the same family, living in one house, reflect the multiple identities, inherited or thrust upon them, as a result of geopolitical upheavals including war itself, imposed by external forces or generated from within through cultural conflict. 

Her book was written in Polish and expertly translated in fastidious detail by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Żanna’s  multi-language skills (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and English) demonstrate her own internationalism and her desires for cross cultural links to be expressed in freedom of thought and movement. Żanna’s book adds to the revelation of the role that the city of Lviv has played in the history of the borderlands of eastern Europe, and how for too long it became almost invisible in the aftermath of the Second World War.

 

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