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Jerzy Pilch (; born 10 August 1952 in Wis?a, Poland) 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.

Born and raised in the small town of Wis?a in the Beskids in southern Poland, Pilch studied Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and became active in the city's underground literary scene in the late 1970s. He began making his name under the martial law in the 1980s, by writing and reading essays for the "spoken magazine" Na G?os ("Out loud"), a regular spoken-word event organised by the oppositional Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej ("Club of Polish Catholic Intellectuals") (even though Pilch himself is Lutheran).

In 1989 Pilch began to contribute highly popular satirical essays for the Kraków-based liberal Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, which established him as a public intellectual. Pilch's best essays from his column in Tygodnik Powszechny appeared in three collections entitled Rozpacz z powodu utraty furmanki ("Despair caused by the loss of a wagon", 1994), Tezy o g?upocie, piciu i umieraniu ("Theses on stupidity, drinking and dying", 1995), and Bezpowrotnie utracona lewor?czno?? ("The irreversible loss of left-handedness", 1998).

Also in 1989, he was conferred the renowned Ko?cielski Award for his debut novel Wyznania twórcy pok?tnej literatury erotycznej ("Confessions of an author of illicit erotic literature"), an ironic insider's account of the Kraków art scene.

Pilch's second novel, Spis cudzo?o?nic ("List of Adulteresses", 1993) , tells the story of a failed eccentric writer guiding a foreign guest on a tour of Kraków and through a curio collection of national myths and the absurd socialist realities of the 1980s. In 1995, actor Jerzy Stuhr made the novel into a film as his directing debut (under the international title List of Lovers).

The same year, Pilch published his third novel Inne rozkoszy ("Other pleasures"), the only one to appear in English so far (as His Current Woman, 2002) (see external links).

Pilch quit his work for Tygodnik Powszechny in 1999, left the Kraków scene entirely, and settled down in Warsaw, where he began to write a column for the weekly Polityka. A collection of texts from this series was published as Upadek cz?owieka pod Dworcem Centralnym ("The Fall of Man in front of the Central Station") in 2002.

Pilch's most successful book so far is his fourth novel Pod Mocnym Anio?em ("The Strong Angel Inn", 2000), a satirical take on the "drinking novel" genre, which was awarded a NIKE, the most prestigious Polish literary award, the following year.

Most recently, Pilch tried his hand at drama; the play Narty Ojca ?wi?tego presents a small-town community excited by the rumour that John Paul II (who was still alive at the time) was going to retire to the town. The plot satirizes the Polish cult around John Paul II, the taboo to even think about the pope's death, as well as the commercialization of the pope's image.

Several of Pilch's books have been translated into various languages, including Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Lithuanian, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish. Nonetheless, Pilch remains little known outside the circles of connoisseurs of East European literature.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jerzy Pilch", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0