Radek Rak wins the 2020 Nike Literary Award

"A Tale of a Serpent’s Heart or Another Word about Jakób Szela" refers to "A Word about Jakób Szela" by Polish poet and novelist Bruno Jasieński. The winning book is a tale about Jakub Szela (written Jakób in the 19th century), a Polish leader of the Peasant Uprising against Polish gentry in 19th-century Galicia region. The author, whose ancestors were peasants, is a veterinarian by trade and writes in his spare time.

Radek Rak has been long fascinated with Jakub Szela, and came to the conclusion that the narrative about the Galician Slaughter (also referred to as the Peasant Uprising of 1846 and the Szela Uprising) was dominated by the accounts of its victims - the Galician gentry.

Rak presents those events from the point of view of the Galician peasants who in 1846 massacred the noblemen in the region, however, he does by taking the reader on a journey into the imaginary world full of witches, talking animals, and ghosts of the dead that wouldn't go away.

This year's readers' Nike award went to Joanna Gierak-Onoszko for "The 27 Deaths of Tony Obed". The authors tells the story of Tony Obed, an Indigenous Canadian, who was taken from his home and forced to go through the Canadian residential school system.

The Nike Literary Award has been established in 1997 and is handed out annually to Polish authors for the best book published throughout the previous year. The award is meant to promote Polish literature. Books of all genres can be nominated for the prize. The winners are given 100,000 zloty and a statuette. The Nike Award is funded by "Gazeta Wyborcza" and Agora Foundation.

Among the laureates there were: Wiesław Myśliwski, Czesław Miłosz, Dorota Masłowska, Olga Tokarczuk, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz and Jerzy Pilch. Last year, both the jury and readers' awards went to Mariusz Szczygieł for his collection of reportages "Nie ma".