THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. AGNIESZKA SZPILA and what (some) women do in the woods
It’s been a long while since I laughed so much while reading a book, especially a Polish one. Usually when I do, I am forced to explain my laughter to my partner with a quick translation from Polish into English. This time I was in luck, as the book in question, Hexes of the Deadwood Forest by Agnieszka Szpila, has just come out in English translation. And I know from my conversations with the translator, Scotia Gilroy, that she has spent a lot of time figuring out solutions to various linguistic and cultural conundrums of which this book is brim-full, so my partner was in safe hands.
Hexes of the Deadwood Forest is rare in Polish literature: it’s extremely direct, witty, sarcastic, filled with explicit sex scenes, including sex with trees and moss; it is alive and filled with fury. It’s a story of a highflying corporate businesswoman, a hater of tree huggers and eco fighters of all types, of any other left-wingers and, in fact, of anybody who is not her, including her own husband and parents. It’s really difficult to develop a liking for this character: she is haughty, self-centred, exploitative, full of loathing for everybody. Until the tables turn and she is filmed having sex with a tree, while sleepwalking. In parallel we witness the creation and development of the Earthen Ones, an anti-patriarchal or anti-institution collective/cult/coven of women communing with nature.
Szpila ridicules contemporary Poland with a sharply satirical eye:
“In Twatville and Cuntborough, you can see at the very first glance that a suit has been cut from a single piece of cloth, whereas in the elite world, represented by big business (with the national oil company at the forefront) as well as by the so-called intelligentsia, five more meters of fabric is used per suit, on average. So that the stripes align with one another. And so that every man wearing such a suit can feel confident and safe. It’s as if the smooth connection of these stripes, these gabardine longitudes and latitudes, ensures the secret flow of energy that controls the world.
In addition to exquisitely tailored clothes (including expensive brand-name tracksuits), the aforementioned intelligentsia living in Podkowa Le!na, the crème de la crème of Polish garden cities, boast too of a very unusual demographic status. Namely: an extraordinary number of art and cultural icons per square meter! Not to mention the fact that the Club of Catholic Intelligentsia organizes all of the city’s cultural events. With peacocks wander-ing through the churchyard gardens and trendy masses sung to pop music.”
At times Szpila’s brand of obscene humour (as well as her anti-clerical tone) made me think of The Decameron. At other times, the book’s apparent ecological slant brought to mind Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, though Szpila’s approach is more blunt, less precise or measured than Tokarczuk’s; more furious perhaps. And her writing strays much closer towards gospel or grotesque.
Szpila’s writing is graphic, politically incorrect, openly angry with the patriarchy and a world dominated by organised religion, in this case – Catholicism. She is the mistress of mockery, which she uses as a very precise tool for unpicking any type of authority or hierarchy, be it corporate, patriarchal or clerical. What’s more, she could not care less about decorum or timidity. And all of that is in fact, to my mind, quite refreshing because it is so very honest. I didn’t even mind the fact that sometimes she oversimplifies – for me this is her strong urge ‘to get it all out’, a compulsion of a kind. And I, for one, was very happy to be taken on this wild ride, no holds barred, recalling my own background when my elders told me that I too was considered a natural born rebel…
By Anna Blasiak
HEXES OF THE DEADWOOD FOREST
by Agnieszka Szpila
Translated by Scotia Gilroy
Published by Bonnier Books (2026)
Read previous posts in The Polka series:
THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. WE HAVE NEWS!
THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. FOUND IN TRANSLATIONS AWARDS
THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. The Chameleon that is DANIEL ODIJA
THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. MAŁGORZATA LEBDA has it all
THE POLKA: What’s Riveting in Polish Literature by Anna Blasiak. JOANNA BATOR and her bears
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