The Shoah in Contemporary Polish Fiction (after 1989)

ABSTRACT. This article takes a look at contemporary Polish prose dealing with theme of the Shoah. “Contemporary”, in this case, means fiction published in the 1990s and after the year 2000, thus already in the twenty-first century. It therefore comprises the last twenty-five years. The fundamental categories used here in the analyses of texts, are the memory and post-memory of the Shoah. The authors who have published works over the last twenty five years have either been witnesses of these events (i.e. Children of the Holocaust), or – more often – representatives of the second or third generation after the Shoah. In this article, contemporary Polish fiction will be exemplified by the prose of Marek Bieńczyk, Piotr Szewc, Igor Ostachowicz, Mariusz Sieniewicz and Piotr Paziński. Analysis contains four categories which structure both the world represented and the form of the prose: transgression, pop-culture, history and metonymy.