Writer and journalist Maja WOLNY will meet her counterpart Joseph PEARCE in order to discuss with him the issue of the situation facing Jews in Poland after the Second World War as addressed in his novel Czarne Liście (Black leaves), which has just been translated into Dutch. The celebrated Antwerp bookshop DE GROENE WATERMAN will fluctuate between reality and fiction in the company of two lovers of literature, history and stories. Don’t miss out on this exciting encounter in pursuit of a little-known episode in the history of central Europe. 

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
>>> De Groene Waterman (Wolstraat 7, 2000 Antwerp) – see map 
>>> Wednesday 13 September – 20:00
>>> Free 

The meeting will be followed by a Polish drink. RSVP: brussels@instytutpolski.org

CZARNE LIŚCIE (Zwarte bladeren | Black leaves) 
Julia Pirotte is a young, Belgo-Polish anti-fascist photographer. Suzanne Spaak recognises her talent and gives her a professional camera which she takes with her to the battlefields of Europe during the Second World War. In July 1946, she witnesses the mass masscres of Jews on Polish soil, the populations’s revenge for the so-called ritual murder of a young Pole. 42 Jews perished in what has gone down in history as the ‘Kielce Massacre’.
Kielce is the birthplace of Maja Wolny. The author mixes history with contemporary times through her elaborate plots. She also asks herself questions about humanity and the share of responsibility which we all bear in historic events and when it comes to the act of remembrance, communicating and transforming memory. 

+++ on the website of the publisher

Maja WOLNY (1976) is a Polish journalist and writer. She began her career as a columnist for the weekly newspaper  Polityka, where she was chief literary editor. In 2003, she set up home in Belgium,  a country in which she has a number of roles: press correspondent, bookseller, museum director and columnist. Her first novel was published in 2008. Czarne Liście is her third novel and the first to be translated into Dutch, by Steven Lopez, under the title Zwarte bladeren. She has since moved back to Poland, where she lives in Kazimierz Dolny.

Joseph PEARCE is a Flemish writer and journalist, whose first novel Het land van belofte: een familiekroniek (1990), translated into French under the title Terre de promesse : une chronique familiale, was extremely well-received in Europe. His book addresses the author’s discovery of his roots: he had believed himself to be of English descent until the day he discovered that his father was a German of Jewish origin who had emigrated to England. His first novels were published by Meulenhoff in Amsterdam. Since 2011, the excellent publishing house De Beizige Bij has been his publisher.