LVIV, Ukraine -- If there is any doubt that Polish writer Janusz Leon Wisniewski has struck a nerve with his Ukrainian readers, one only had to witness the scene at Lviv’s book festival on Sept. 18.
Well in advance of his book signing, fans – mostly women, but also young and middle-aged men — pushed and shoved for a place in line.
In Lviv to promote the Ukrainian-language versions of “Loneliness on the Net” and “Arrhythmia of Feeling,” Wisniewski attributed part of his success in Eastern Europe to a highly developed understanding of melancholy.
“These nations are very sad,” he said over coffee on a pleasant Lviv morning the day before the book signing. “They celebrate being sad.”
At 56, Wisniewski is enjoying the kind of success most writers only dream about. Since his first novel, “Loneliness on the Net,” was published in 2001 in Poland, his books have regularly appeared on that country’s best-seller list.
Selling more than 300,000 copies in Poland, “Loneliness” is an erotically-charged contemporary love story of two people engaging in an online romance that becomes real. It has been made into a film in Poland and adopted to the stage in Russia.
“Arrhythmia of Feeling” broke new ground by transforming an extended interview into a book. His latest work “Bikini” was sold to 11 countries in one year, and may be the effort that brings him international success.
Not bad for someone who never dreamed of becoming a writer and still considers the craft a hobby.
Despite his literary accomplishments, Wisniewski, who has a doctorate in chemistry, has kept his full-time job as a designer and writer of software for a chemical information institute in Frankfurt, Germany. He takes vacation time to do book tours and festivals.
“I love my job,” said Wisniewski simply when asked why he doesn’t quit working and write full time. But he admitted to engaging the idea of eventually leaving Frankfurt, his home for over two decades, and moving back to Poland to work and write from there.
Wisniewski joked that soon his “Loneliness” will become “history” because he spends so much time in the novel explaining how the Internet works. Much of it is biographical, from what he felt and observed about love, Wisniewski said. The book was written while he was going through a separation and he never intended for it to be published.
The words he wrote were for him, kept in an “electronic drawer.” He would, however, send fragments of his writing to a friend, who encouraged him to contact Polish publishers. Wisniewski finally relented and a best-selling author was born.
In some ways, “Arrhythmia” is a continuation of “Loneliness,” a book Wisniewski couldn’t write today. “I am a different man [now],” he explained.
The result of nine hours of interviews with well known-Polish television personality Dorota Wellman and “six bottles of wine,” the book explores Wisniewski’s own life, including the end of his marriage, the relationship between men and women, and the journey of self realization and self identification.
“Bikini,” with its blue cover and ocean view within the title, may fool the readers at first glance into thinking that it is another contemporary, sexual novel. They
would, however, only be partially correct. Love and sex are certainly present, but the novel also deals with a side of history many people may not know about.
Set at the end of World War II, the story follows Ann, an aspiring German photographer who hates fascists and loves an American.
She documents the bombing of her hometown of Dresden, travels to New York and finally Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear testing by the Americans.
The idea came about in Zagreb, when Wisniewski and the director of the film adaptation of “Loneliness” decided to skip its showing and instead went to a cafe.
The director said he had been approached by an American who wanted to make a low-budget film about Bikini Atoll. Would Wisniewski write the screen play?
The writer knew with his full-time job, he couldn’t get a script written and so declined.
ut Bikini Atoll intrigued him. He spent two years researching the book. He said that he wanted to look at “good Germans,” those people who opposed the Nazis, but were caught up in the war. It seems like a remarkable undertaking for someone whose father spent three years in a German concentration camp as a Polish prisoner.
Born in Torun, Wisniewski comes from a part of Poland that for some 150 years was under German rule, and where the two ethic groups mingled.
“I decided to show this [photographer’s] family in Dresden. What happened [there] in three nights … is one of the biggest crimes during the war.” In those three nights in February 1945, more people were killed during Allied bombings than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. “My mother never taught me to love Germans, and my father never taught me to hate them,” he added.
Back at the book fair, a murmur passed like wildfire through the crowd, which quickly parted for the author to come through. For the next four hours, Wisniewski stood under bright lights shaking hands, chatting amiably, and posing for photos until the last fan walked away with a signed book.
“I told him: ‘Take off your jacket,’” said Maria Solomina from Machaon-Ukraine Publishers who accompanied Wisniewski in Lviv. “He refused. He said it was disrespectful to his readers.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected].
