Koniec [In the End]

Paszport “Polityki” nominee, Conrad Award winner. Critically acclaimed novel. Rights sold to Holland.

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

Nominations and awards:

• "Polityka” Passports nominee
• Odkrycia Empiku Award nominee
• Conrad Award winner

Rights sold:

• Holland (Van Oorschot)

Samples in English and Spanish available.

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.

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

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Praise for Koniec:

In this family, the family that survived but was not saved, many things are locked away and walled off by silence in hopes they simply disappear. Meanwhile, the past keeps on drowning one person after the next. Hermanowicz managed to find just the right language to tell about our constant coexistence with the ghosts of our past.

— Justyna Sobolewska, Polityka weekly

When looking for contemporary literary tropes and traditions to place Hermanowicz’s prose, I do not hesitate to recall such names as Herta Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, Toni Morrison, or Jesmyn Ward – all of them masterfully skilled at scratching our collective wounds open and gazing deep into them not only to let the tale of hurt sound loud and clear but also to let those wounds cleanse and heal.

— Katarzyna Sawicka-Mierzyńska, Książki – Magazyn do Czytania monthly

Hermanowicz managed to do something that very rarely happens in contemporary Polish prose – she construed a language perfectly suited for the story she had to tell.

— Monika Ochędowska, Dwutygodnik

Page after page, I kept on finding new surprises, in the plot lines as well as in the purely spectacular narrative structure. A star is born, that much we know for sure about Marta Hermanowicz already. Remember that name: you’ll hear about this book again.

— Marcin Kube, Rzeczpospolita daily

It certainly is one of the most important novels of the year and beyond. Hermanowicz wrote a book we were waiting for: a great Polish odyssey with no pomp and no pretense. It’s a glorious ballad of stowaway passengers who make themselves at home in our bodies. And who, from time to time, demand we feed them.

— Wojciech Szot, Gazeta Wyborcza daily

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