Empty sky

Radek Rak (born 1987) is originally from the Polish Subcarpathia. He has won a number of literary awards, both fandom and general cultural (he was twice the winner of the E. Żuławski Prize, the J. Seidel Prize, the Nika Literary Prize, the Schlönkf Prize and the Eurocon Prize in the category of “Best Novel”).

Radek Rak’s works skillfully combine magical realism, everyday romance and fantasy (with clearly visible ethnic motifs) and are often inspired by the history of the places where the author spent his childhood and youth. Folk legends and mythical creatures, urban space and famous characters from history and literature – all this is woven into a single bizarre world, in which you don’t always understand where the author’s imagination ends and the incredible twists of real history begin.

Lublin in the interwar years is also a small Ruthenian village in the Carpathian Mountains. Alchemists, sorcerers, demonic and infernal creatures walking the streets of the city alongside their inhabitants, and the tragedy of people who only have the memory of themselves: a blurred and fragile memory, where reality is combined with fairy tales and myths; a memory carried only by those who have survived - and survived. A memory that passes away with them. The city and the village, reality and fairy tales form intricate patterns on the pages of this book.

In his interviews, Radek Rak often speaks of himself as a descendant of Polish serf peasants. This double perspective - a city dweller who has assimilated the cultural and literary canons of the modern world, and a person who tries not to forget his roots - leaves an imprint on most of the author's works. And then bizarrely intertwined plots appear, where characters from folk demonology and (quasi)historical heroes collide in a whirlpool of places and cities, immersed in Polish everyday life of the last three centuries - and they are so skillfully intertwined that sometimes it is impossible to separate myth from reality.