Creative Matters

“Two Silver Herrings for My Granddaughter”: Central Europe, Poland, and Transnational Affinities. Deborah Levy in Conversation

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.14.42585

Keywords:

interview

Abstract

The piece addresses Deborah Levy’s long-standing dialogue with Central European history and cultural production and the impact that the latter exerted onto her works, including her “living autobiography”. It also  showcases various modes of cultural exchange and transnational affinities between the global West and East in the Cold War period.

Author Biographies

Robert Kusek, Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Robert Kusek is Jagiellonian University Professor, Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. His research interests include life writing genres, the contemporary novel in English, queer heritage, as well as a comparative approach to literary studies. He is the author of Through the Looking Glass: Writers’ Memoirs at the Turn of the 21st Century (Jagiellonian University Press, 2017), several dozen articles  and co-editor of fourteen volumes of articles, most notably Travelling Texts: J.M. Coetzee and Other Writers (Peter Lang, 2014). He was a researcher in a number of Polish and international projects – currently he is a principal investigator in the National Science Centre funded project entitled “(Un)accidental Tourists: Polish Literature and Visual Culture in South Africa in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”

Wojciech Szymański, University of Warsaw

Wojciech Szymański is assistant professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw (since 2017), fellow at the Kate Hamburger Research Centre at the University of Munich (2024), author of several dozen articles, editor and author of monographs and exhibition catalogues, principal investigator and researcher in a number of Polish and international research projects; editor-in-chief of “Ikonotheka” journal (2019–2025). He co-curated Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s exhibition ‘Re-enchanting the World’ at the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte in Venice in 2022. Recently he co-edited the following: ‘Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: Re-enchanting the World’ (Berlin, Warsaw 2022), ‘Travelling Images: Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’ (Kraków 2022), ‘Over There: Works by Alice Halicka from 1913–47 in Foreign Collections’ (Łódź 2024) and ‘Some Names Have Been Changed: Works by Karolina Jabłońska, 2023–2024’ (Berlin, Sopot 2024).

Published

2025-07-08

Issue

Vol. 14 (2025): EJLW

Section

Creative Matters

Copyright (c) 2025 Robert Kusek, Wojciech Szymański

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