Dźwięki ptaków [Birdcalls]

Reality can be overwhelming. In these short stories, everyone feels that, and each character has their own way of trying to cope. Around them spreads the city of Warsaw present and future: crumbling tenement houses, sparkling skyscrapers, stuffy clubs lively parks and the dry bed of Vistula river. Bird Sounds is a collection of fifteen short stories where life can be stranger than dreams.

There, we meet a postage-stamp designer, leading a double life. A dog named Włodek that struggles with his anger issues. An elderly woman who plants geraniums and fears dementia. A man whose own death doesn’t stop him from going to work as scheduled. In Kowalik’s stories, the absurd seeps through reality and laughter overlaps the most sober of facts, and the crows watch it all.

Just like on an LP, fast tracks are intertwined with unhurried ballads whose characters don’t give up on looking for intimacy in the world that seems more and more isolated.

Publication date: April 2025

Nominations and awards:

• JOSPEHA Award nominee

Sample in English available.

About the Author:

Arek Kowalik (born in 1991) is a writer and editor. He published in “Pismo”, “Tekstualia” and “Strona Czynna”. As part of an artistic scholarship from the capital city of Warsaw, he is working on his first novel. He comes from Lower Silesia and lives in Warsaw.

Praise for Birdcalls:

I loved Karo who wants to get her legs back. And the showering shark. I don’t think we could do without them. Kowalik’ has an impeccable sense of humor and incredible imagination.

—Bora Chung, Korean translator and author shortlisted for the International Booker Prize for her short story collection Cursed Bunny

There are ten different authors inside Kowalik – each one of them different and brilliant in his own way. I haven’t read such a well-thought story collection in a long time.

—Piotr Kofta

The books that resonate with me the most are the ones that touch on our contemporaneity: they comment on the tiredness, fear of the future, loneliness. Bird Sounds by Arek Kowalik gave me everything I was looking for.

—Aleksandra Pakiela, Vouge Polska

Birdcalls is yet another (after Suszczyńska, Bogdał and Masłowska) well-written short story collection that offers a fresh perspective on the world around us, and – in my case, at least – soothe the longing for a great contemporary novel.

— Adam Woźniak, Dwutygodnik

I happily buy into Arek Kowalik’s multi-voiced storytelling. You should read it, too, and not only to learn more about today’s thirty-year-olds.

—Izabella Adamczewska, Gazeta Wyborcza

Arek Kowalik is a perceptive observer, allowing us to get very close to every character he creates.

— Justyna Sobolewska, Polityka