KRUSZYŃSKI Zbigniew

Born on 29 August 1957 in Radom into a family of doctors; son of Jerzy Kruszyński and Halina, née Dębicka. He attended the Tytus Chałubiński Grammar School in Radom, completing his advanced secondary education in 1976. He then studied Polish and Romance philology at the University of Wroclaw (UWr) for five years and then continued his studies at the University of Lausanne in 1980/91 thanks to an Adam Mickiewicz grant. In October 1981, he returned to Poland and took up a post as an assistant at the Romance studies department in Wroclaw. He made his debut in 1980 in the monthly "Odra" (no. 12; using the by-line zet) with a report on a symposium on Witold Gombrowicz held at Université de Lille. Following the imposition of martial law in December 1981, he was involved in the underground structures of the Independent Self-governing Trade Union Solidarity. Some of his actions included hiding opposition activists in his home. In 1982, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and deprived of his civil rights for three years, leading to his expulsion from the university. In 1983, his sentence was commuted and soon acquired a passport (albeit one that did not entitle him to return to Poland). He and his family left for Sweden. He initially settled in Uppsala where he taught French before moving to Lund and working at Stockholm University. He occasionally taught in the Polish studies department in Copenhagen. He made his debut as a prose writer in 1987 with the short story Fragment powierzchni (A Fragment of a Surface), which was published in the journal "Zeszyty Literackie" (Paris, no. 16). In 1988, several of his translations from French appeared in publications that were not subject to state censorship in Poland. His prose pieces, translations, reviews and notes appeared in periodicals and journals including "Odra" (in 1984 he signed notes as: Z.K., and in 2004 and 2005), "Pamiętnik Literacki" (1984-86), "Zeszyty Literackie" (Paris, 1986-88, Warsaw 1991, 1997, and 2003, in 1988 he used the name Jerzy Kempiński). In the mid-1990s he began publishing novels and volumes of short stories. He received the Radom Cultural Prize in 1997. He joined the Association of Polish Writers (SPP) in 1999 before returning to Poland in 2000. From 2001 he ran workshops for translators of Swedish literature at Södertörn University in Stockholm. He taught on the postgraduate Programme in Literary and Artistic Studies at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow. He was appointed to the chapter of the Gdynia Literary Prize in 2009. In 2015, he received the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Prize of the City of Poznan for his outstanding contributions to Polish literature and culture. He married the architect Elżbieta Kożdoń in 1984. He has a son, Peter (b. 1980). He lives in Laski in the Kłodzko Valley.