Conrad Festival 2024

What is literature if not a transformed form of existence? What is life if not literary material? This year’s edition of the Conrad Festival explored issues related to authenticity and its transcendence. A group of fourth-grade students expanding their Polish language set off at the end of October to listen, talk and explore the meanders of the phenomenon in the rays of the sun, the silence of the hall of the Słowacki Theater and the smell of turning pages. Did they delight? Yes. What? A language full of literary references and the authenticity of Gabriel Krauze, who, after leaving a London gang, decided that this time he would sell his soul to literature. The peace and humility of Karl Knausgård, whose metaphysical reflection made you want to immediately read another novel to touch, at least for a moment, the physicality he was talking about. The joy and energy of Lauren Groff’s feminist thought, which makes closed spaces paradoxically open. Andrzej Stasiuk’s charisma and distance towards himself and the world. Finally, Olga Tokarczuk’s calmness, her enthusiasm for searching for non-obvious biographies and her reluctance to take selfies that distort the answer to the question: who is she?

They come back and rush to another meeting, this time in Warsaw with Paweł Sołtys, author of “Mikrotyki” and “August”. They want to be on the road, explore ambiguities, experience complexity and persist under the pressure of routine.

(text: Katarzyna Szymańska, translated by: Beata Ciacek; photos: author unknown)