The son of German-Polish parents was born in 1968 in Bartoszyce (Masuria), he has been living in Germany since 1985. He studied eastern European cultural history as well as German literature and linguistics. He has been writing and publishing novels, novellas, narratives, poems, and essays since the 1990s. He also works as a translator.
In 1997, his first novel “Der Dadajsee” (The Dadaj Lake) received “The New Book in Lower Saxony and Bremen” award from the German Association of Novelists. Numerous scholarships and sponsorships, among others, resident scholarships in Bremen, Krakow, New York, Berlin, Olevano Romano near Rome, and Venice, followed between 1997 and 2010. The Deutsche Literaturfonds (German Literature Fund) in Darmstadt funded work on the novels “Onkel Jimmy, die Indianer und Ich” (Uncle Jimmy, the Indians, and Me) and “Wodka und Messer. Lied vom Ertrinken” (Vodka and Knife. Song of Drowning) in 2000 and 2007. His novel “Kino Muza” from 2003 came out in Poland in 2009 in a translation by Dariusz Muszer (Borussia publishing house).
He published four collections of poetry:
- 2008 – “Ein Kiosk mit elf Millionen Nächten” (Kiosk with Eleven Million Nights);
- 1998 – “Der Gesang aus dem Zauberbottich” (The Songs from the Magic Cauldron);
- 2000 – “Dame mit dem Hermelin” (Lady with an Ermine);
- 1998 – “Jesus und Marx von der Esso-Tankstelle” (Jesus and Marx from the Esso Gas Station).
2009 he received the prestigious Adelbert von Chamisso Prize awarded to authors whose mother tongue and cultural background are non-German and whose works make an important contribution to German literature: his texts have “given the language of German literature new colours and new shades of colour, while strengthening the close ties between the Polish and German cultural realms in a poetically compelling way”.
