Chołod

Chołod is named after a settlement in the far north, inhabited by a small community living according to its own laws, isolated from civilization. A Silesian, Konrad Widuch, fleeing a Soviet gulag, settles there and describes his stay in Chołod and his earlier turbulent and dramatic fate in his memoirs. In a mysterious way, the memoirs find their way to the author of the book, who reconstructs them and explains how they came into his hands.^[1][2]

Chołod received favourable reviews. Marcin Belza of Kultura Liberalna praised the book, noting that "this is a novel that doesn't think for us" and that "plays out the themes of identity in a virtuoso way".^[3] On Forbes it was noted that Chołod is an attempt to get to the meaning of history.^[4] It has also been widely covered by other Polish language media.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]} It has been nominated for the Empik Bestsellers 2022 in the categories of fiction and audio superfiction and Lubimyczytać.pl Book of the Year 2022 in the category of historical novel.^[12][13]