Nike Literary Award 2023 for “He who laughs who has teeth” by Zyta Rudzka

The Nike Literary Award, considered the most important Polish literary distinction, was awarded on Sunday for the 27th time. The gala took place on Sunday evening in the building of the University Library in Warsaw. According to the rules of the award, the jury decides which title the laurel will go to during the deliberations taking place on the same day as the gala, which is the first Sunday in October.

The gala was honored by the Matylda/Łukasiewicz duo (Matylda Damięcka and Radek Łukasiewicz), who opened the gala with the song “Matka”. During the gala he also performed “Men” and “Tender Barbarian”. The host of the evening was Grażyna Torbicka.

The jury chaired by literary expert and writer prof. Inga Iwasiów recognized Zyta Rudzka’s novel “He who laughs who has teeth” as the best book of 2022.

In addition to the Nike Award, the Nike Audience Award was officially presented during the gala – an award granted by the readers of “Gazeta Wyborcza”. The winning book turned out to be “Gdynia promised. City, modernism, modernization 1920-1939” by Grzegorz Piątek. This reportage earned Piątek the Gdynia Literary Award in the essay category and the Polityka Passport in the literature category.

The author of “Gdynia promised…” created an extraordinary historical outline over the years of the development of his hometown. But not only. Based on carefully researched archival sources, he built a sometimes terrifying journey through interwar Poland with all its faces. It confronts the propaganda slogans announced at that time with reality. He deconstructed the almost mythical legends about Gdynia as a city of dreams.

The finalists of the 27th edition of the Nike Literary Award included three novels, three reportages and a volume of poetry. The seven were announced in “Gazeta Wyborcza” on September 1. This year, the jury chaired by the Iwasi family included: Marek Beylin, Przemysław Czapliński, Justyna Jaworska, Tadeusz Nyczek, Masza Potocka, Krzysztof Siwczyk, Maria Topczewska and Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz.

The Nike Literary Award is considered the most important Polish literary award. Books can take part in the competition regardless of the literary genre represented. It was established in 1997. Wiesław Myśliwski’s “Widnokrąg” was appreciated at that time. In 2007, his next novel “A Treatise on Shelling Beans” received an award. Myśliwski was thus the first two-time winner of the Nike Award. It has only repeated this success so far Olga Tokarczuk. The Nobel Prize winner was honored in 2008 for her novel “Flights”, and in 2015 for “Księgi Jakubowe”.

The prize cannot be divided and cannot be awarded posthumously. The regulations exclude a situation in which the jury would not choose the title of the winning book. The decision about choice The jury decides the winner on the day of the award ceremony, always on the first Sunday in October. The author of the winning book receives PLN 100,000 and a statuette. The organizers are the Nike Literary Award Foundation and “Gazeta Wyborcza”, and its founder is the Agora Foundation.