Koniec [In the End]

One of the most awaited literary debuts of 2024.

Metaphysical and blasphemous novel about the tragedy of war that never meets a clean end with a peace treaty. The war goes on, residing within its victims who carry it from one generation to the next.

Malwina, an exceptionally sensitive girl, experiences her grandmother’s wartime memories in her dreams. This makes her exist in two parallel realities at once: the 1940s Eastern borderlands and Siberia along the 1990s Poland. Those realities seep and bleed through one another, making Malwina a catcher of her survivor grandmother’s dreams, or perhaps a dybbuk who gives voice to the dead. To Malwina, the war persists, haunting her day and night alike. Poignant and piercing, Koniec is an impressively well-crafted prose.

Release date: March 2024

About the Author:

Marta Hermanowicz is the laureate of the 11th International Short Story Festival (2015), and of the short story competition at the Mountains of Literature Festival (2020). Her writings have been featured in Twórczość, Czas Literatury, Fabularie, and Polityka weekly. With a background in Political Science, Philosophy, and History of Art, she brings an in-depth, multi-faceted perspective to her writing.

Excerpts in english soon available.

In case of any interest, please contact our partner agent: Piotr Wawrzeńczyk at Book/lab Literary Agency piotr@literatura.com.pl

Praise for Koniec:

The many layers of Koniec, involving the secrets of the lost farm, displacement, the cutting of taiga, death, lost relationships and the struggle of everyday life, are enough to keep the reader on edge. I would like to believe that at some point, trauma does release its grip and lets the characters find their happiness. Powerful and wise, this prose is brimming with the minutiae of life.

– Inga Iwasiów

Contrary to what the title might imply, this story never stops, and as its reader, I trust Marta Hermanowicz and her voice. While she might have inherited those stories from others, she did an incredible job at twisting and reshaping them for the contemporary audience. Koniec is her debut novel and will undeniably stand among the most poignant pieces of the 2020s.

– Piotr Siemion