Wydawnictwo Literackie is a Kraków

Kraków

Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

-based Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 publishing house. Since its foundation in 1953, Wydawnictwo Literackie has been focused on publishing modern prose and poetry by both renown and emerging authors, both Polish and foreign. In recent years it is primarily associated with editions of Polish language classics of the 20th century and of modern science-fiction novels. In recent years the publishing house also expanded into the market of textbooks for humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

, lexicons and dictionaries.

Among the writers and poets associated with the publishing house are Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winners Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....

, Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz and Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...

. Other Polish authors whose works have been published by the Wydawnictwo Literackie (some of them for the first time, or for the first time in official print

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

) include Janusz Anderman, Jacek Dukaj

Jacek Dukaj

Jacek Dukaj is a Polish science fiction writer. Winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award , Śląkfa , Żuławski Award , Kościelski Award and the European Union Prize for Literature .-Career:Dukaj studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University...

, Aleksander Fiut, Witold Gombrowicz

Witold Gombrowicz

Witold Marian Gombrowicz was a Polish novelist and dramatist. His works are characterized by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and an absurd, anti-nationalist flavor...

, Zbigniew Herbert

Zbigniew Herbert

Zbigniew Herbert was an influential Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement – Home Army during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers...

, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński

Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski

Gustaw Herling-Grudziński was a Polish writer, journalist, essayist and soldier. He is best known for writing a personal account of life in the Soviet gulag - A World Apart.-Biography:...

, Marek S.Huberath, Maria Janion

Maria Janion

Maria Janion is a Polish scholar, critic and theoretician of literature as well as a renowned feminist. She is a Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, specialising in literary Romanticism.Janion is also a member of the Polish Academy of Learning. She...

, Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist and writer whose dispatches in book form brought him a global reputation. Also a photographer and poet, he was born in Pińsknow in Belarusin the Kresy Wschodnie or eastern borderlands of the second Polish Republic, into poverty: he would say later that...

, Jan Kott

Jan Kott

Jan Kott was a well-known Polish critic and theoretician of the theatre.Born in Warsaw in 1914, Kott moved to the United States in 1966 and lectured at Yale and Berkeley. A poet, translator, and critic, he was also one of the finest essayists of the Polish school...

, Stanisław Lem, Ewa Lipska

Ewa Lipska

Ewa Lipska, born October 8, 1945, in Kraków is a Polish poet from the generation of the Polish "New Wave." Collections of her verse have been translated into English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German and Hungarian...

, Jerzy Pilch

Jerzy Pilch

Jerzy Pilch is one of the most important contemporary Polish writers and journalists. Critics have compared Pilch's style to Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera, or Bohumil Hrabal....

, Tadeusz Różewicz

Tadeusz Rózewicz

Tadeusz Różewicz is a Polish poet and writer.Różewicz belongs to the first generation born and educated after Poland regained its independence in 1918. His youthful poems were published in 1938...

, Jan Józef Szczepański, Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful Polish writers of her generation, particularly noted for the hallmark mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw. She has published a collection of poems, three novels,...

, Jan Twardowski

Jan Twardowski

Jan Jakub Twardowski was a famous Polish poet, but, as he said of himself, he was a priest first of all. He was a chief Polish representative of contemporary religious lyrics. He wrote short, simple poems, humorous, sometimes with colloquialisms...

, Karol Wojtyła

Pope John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

 and Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist.In 1982 he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland, and resides in Kraków. His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 11 September attacks...

.

The printing house also publishes the Polish language editions of literary classics of English, German, Spanish and Russian-language literary worlds, including the works by Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi is a British writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. She is president of the writers’ organization English PEN. Her latest book is All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion...

, John Banville

John Banville

John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...

, Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

, Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.- Life :Thomas Bernhard was...

, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, Didier van Cauwelaert

Didier Van Cauwelaert

Didier Van Cauwelaert is a French author who was born in Nice. In 1994 his novel Un Aller simple won the Prix Goncourt.-Works:* Vingt ans et des poussières * Poisson d'amour * Les vacances du fantôme...

, Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke

Susanna Mary Clarke is a British author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , a Hugo Award-winning alternate history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time...

, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French dramatist, novelist and fiction writer. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.- Life :...

, Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...

, T.S.Eliot, Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes Macías is a Mexican writer and one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. He has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.-Biography:Fuentes was born in...

, Jason Goodwin

Jason Goodwin

Jason Goodwin is a British writer and historian. He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University. Following the success of A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, he walked from Poland to Istanbul, Turkey...

, Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...

, Ivan Klima

Ivan Klíma

Ivan Klíma is a Czech novelist and playwright.- Biography :Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement...

, David Mitchell

David Mitchell (author)

David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.- Biography :...

, Garth Nix

Garth Nix

Garth Nix is an Australian author of young adult fantasy novels, most notably the Old Kingdom series, The Seventh Tower series, and The Keys to the Kingdom series. He has frequently been asked if his name is a pseudonym, to which he has responded, "I guess people ask me because it sounds like the...

, Ian Ogilvy

Ian Ogilvy

Ian Raymond Ogilvy is an English film and television actor.-Early life:He was born in Woking, Surrey, England, the son of advertising executive Francis Ogilvy and actress Aileen Raymond .He was educated at Sunningdale School, Eton College and at the Royal Academy of...

, Bulat Okudzhava

Bulat Okudzhava

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song"...

, Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

, Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl is an American novelist and educator. His novels include The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens and have been published in more than 40 countries.-Biography:...

, Graham Swift

Graham Swift

Graham Colin Swift FRSL is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes...

, John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

 and Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

.