So far polysystem theory has not been preoccupied with the question of how far the major changes within one 

social and literary polysystem influence other literary polysystems. In this particular case, the question is 

whether the major changes in Poland had any impact on the translation of Polish literature into other languages. 

The question has two aspects. The

first one concerns textual matters, that is whether the new linguistic and stylistic features of post-1989 Polish 

literature are a challenge for translators, and whether the new Polish idiom is reflected in the English versions 

of translated books. The second aspect of this question is about the selection of what gets translated and why. 

To answer the first question one would have to undertake a systematic corpus research with a sample of 

representative texts. However, since the period under consideration is short and the selection of literary texts 

from 'small' literatures is always idiosyncratic, the

outcome of this kind of research would not be neither particularly useful nor incisive. Perhaps at this stage 

in the evolution of the Polish literary polysystem, it is more important to ask how the response to the Polish 

changes is reflected in the change of book selection for translation in relation to the period before 1989.

The first response to the changes in Poland was an expectation on the part of British and also American 

publishers that the change will either reveal something that was hidden from the public view by censorship, 

or generate a wave of new and exciting writing. In 1993 the now-defunct Forest Books published a collection 

of Polish poetry with an emphatic title

Young Poets of a New Poland. In the introduction to the volume, the editor Donald Pirie claimed:

Though this selection of poems may reflect a period of transition rather than a new poetic aesthetic that is the 

expression of a very different Polish society, it is surely also true that authentic, convincing poetry is always 

located in the transitional and unstable, rather than confined by the predictable. (Machey: 1993: XIII)

Ten years later, an anthology, Altered States (Mengham et al., 2003) was very similar in tone. In fact, the 

subtitle of the volume, New Polish Poetry, implied that Poland had a generation of new poets to be discovered.

 In both volumes separated by exactly a decade, new was a buzz word, very much in the spirit of how Poland 

and the whole of Eastern Europe was represented in the media. However, when we try to assess the impact 

of both volumes, we shall see that it was not substantial. Neither of the two publications generated either 

individual volumes for the poets included, or a follow-up interest in the whole generation of these poets. 

In fact, the mainstream publishers, if they published Polish poetry at all, remained committed to the poets 

of the older generation: Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Ewa 

Lipska, Adam Zagajewski and Piotr Sommer. Even if we take into consideration publications in small literary 

magazines, we can clearly see that Polish poetry ceased to be in demand and that the novelty of Polish 

literature had to be discovered in other genres.

In contrast to poetry, the Polish prose, not very well represented before 1989 (perhaps with the exception 

of Stanislaw Lem's science fiction and Ryszard Kapuscinski's literary reportage) began to be noticed abroad, 

and in a different way from before. In the absence of political criteria for the selection of texts, the UK 

publishers began to apply the same criteria to Polish literature as to literature from other countries. There is 

now a clear correlation between the translated texts and their reputation in Poland. This reputation is based 

on three sets of criteria: an award of a prestigious literary prize (such as Nike Readers' Prize), the long-term 

reputation of the writer in Poland, or the media publicity around a book, usually written by a previously 

unknown author.

In the first category, that is books awarded prizes in Poland, we have Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, 

House of Night, Joanne Olczk-Roniker's In the Garden of Memory, and Antoni Libera's Madame. Pawel Huelle's 

short stories were published in 1991, so his novel Mercedes-Benz had an easier entry into the market, although 

the sponsorship by Mercedes-Benz for this novel created a lot of media and marketing publicity for the author

 in Poland. Tomek Tryzna's Girl Nobody, and Dorota Maslowska's White and Red are good examples of a new 

Polish phenomenon of authors and books

whose reputation is created by publicity and media manipulation.

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