Naked Eye acquires Bestiariusz Nowohucki by Elżbieta Łapczyńska

Set in the shadow of the colossal steelworks that is Nowa Huta in 1950s Poland, this polyphonic novel is told through a gallery of unsettling figures: a prophet who reads signs in blast-furnace fumes, an arsenic eater, a double, a man without a face. When the enigmatic Dr Szpigiel enters their lives, order begins to fracture — flawed, damaged and unfinished humans collide in their attempts to navigate the industrial labyrinth.

In this striking debut, Elżbieta Łapczyńska blends myth, history and the surreal to expose a world of strangeness and warped metaphysics, rooted in the raw physicality of the body and inherited rituals and the brutal realities of industrial labour. Bestiariusz Nowohucki is a haunting exploration of how ideology, place and work reshape human lives.

Bestiariusz Nowohucki will be translated from the Polish by Sean Gasper Bye and Klaudia Cierluk and is due for publication in 2027.

Published in Poland by Biuro Literackie