Jakub Żulczyk: 'We're all two inches tall'

In this Spring series of podcasts we've heard from Jenny Erpenbeck, Grahame Williams, Lauren Caroline Smith and Rose Rahtz. We bring it to a close with Jakub Żulczyk and his story Many Years of Hardships, translated by John and Małgorzata Markoff.

Żulczyk became a bestseller with hard-hitting thrillers such as The Institute and Blinded by the Lights, a semi-autobiographical novel which the author turned into a hit show for HBO. But Many Years of Hardships draws on deeper roots.

"One of my first memories from childhood is my grandmother telling me stories about little dwarfs," Żulczyk explains. His hero, Big Barrel, is one of the characters from the Polish imaginary, a krasnoludek only two inches tall.

A lot of Żulczyk's writing comes from "dark places", he continues, but in Many Years of Hardships he gives his twisted sense of humour free rein. "At the heart of it all, it’s a funny story."

But there's a serious side to Big Barrel's struggles with food, doggos and a shadowy figure pulling all the strings. Surrounded by war, powerful corporations and the climate crisis, the dwarf's predicament feels all too familiar. "We live in a world now where everyone feels like this," Żulczyk says.

The challenges we face may be acute, but the author remains an optimist.

"Totalitarian structures, or power structures, or violent structures ultimately fail in confrontation with powers that are open-minded, that have freedom of thought, open channels of communication and so on."

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