Rushdie nad Wisłą: recepcja, przekład i polityczność literatury światowej
Rushdie in Poland: Reception, Translation, and the Politics of World Literature

Summary/Abstract: Salman Rushdie’s work has undoubtedly become a central reference point in the canon of postcolonial literature, as well as a key component of contemporary world literature, as constructed within the frameworks of Western literary scholarship. At the same time, it is clear that the reception of Rushdie’s writing in Poland has followed a distinct trajectory from that of the global context. While he is a recognizable author among Polish readers, and all of his prose works, along with most of his essay collections, are consistently published in Polish translations shortly after their original English release, accompanied by substantial media and promotional attention, academic studies on Rushdie by Polish scholars remain relatively scarce. Rushdie, a foundational figure in global postcolonial literature, appears to be so extensively examined in the English-language context that he seems less appealing to Polish researchers than writers occupying more peripheral positions. A closer look at the early decades of Rushdie’s reception in Poland, however, reveals more complex dynamics shaping his Polish readership. These include not only questions of translation, cultural foreignness, and its transmission, but also various forms of political entanglement and the evolving position of Polish culture in relation to the global literary landscape. His first novel was met with significant scepticism from Polish reviewers as early as the 1970s. Midnight’s Children, published in 1981, was largely interpreted as a mere “offshoot” of magical realism, and several different excerpts were translated by various translators for Polish literary journals. The Satanic Verses was long read almost exclusively through the lens of Muslim backlash and the so-called “Rushdie Affair”. During Poland’s early post-communist transition, public debate in the press even questioned whether such a novel should be translated at all, with responses heavily influenced by the political leanings of the commentators. Only over time did attention begin to shift toward the literary quality of Rushdie’s texts and the thematic issues he explores. The Polish reception of Salman Rushdie’s work thus serves as a lens through which to examine the complexities of how postcolonial discourses and authors find their place in Polish cultural space, as well as how global literature and its cultural contexts are received, translated, and reinterpreted.

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