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Rak, Radek

Entry updated 30 March 2026. Tagged: Author.

Working name of Radosław Rak (1987-    ), Polish veterinarian and author of Fantastika whose fiction frequently draws on Polish regional history, folklore, and local legends (especially from the Subcarpathian region). His prose is noted for its linguistic inventiveness.

Rak began his writing career in online forums and small-press publications within the Polish genre community. His debut story was "Ptaki nad Lublinem" ["Birds over Lublin"] in Nowa Fantastyka for March 2011, a New Weird tale in which the appearance of anomalously behaving flocks over the titular town signals either an impending metaphysical threat or the narrator's descent into madness. Further stories followed.

Rak's debut novel, Kocham cię, Lilith ["I Love You, Lilith"] (2014) follows a patient in a sanatorium. Beginning as a romance, the novel gradually transforms into a dreamlike, illogical, fantastic tale exploring male desire, supernatural allure, demonic femininity (see Sex), and the porous boundary between reality and fantasy.

His second novel, Puste niebo ["Empty Sky"] (2016), is set in a fable-like reimagined interwar version of the eastern Polish City Lublin, populated by eccentric townsfolk and otherworldly creatures, with Airships, alchemical laboratories, rabbinical inventions, and revolutionary unrest. The story protagonist, a naïve young man, accidentally shatters the Moon, then embarks on a quest to craft a new one to restore cosmic order. The novel's wistful, folkloric atmosphere and its mingling of everyday life with the marvellous strongly evoke Bruno Schulz's style of Magic Realism, which Rak has cited as a foundational influence.

It was his third novel that brought Rak to national and international attention. Baśń o wężowym sercu albo wtóre słowo o Jakóbie Szeli ["A Tale of the Serpent's Heart or the Second Word about Jakub Szela"] (2019) reworks the real 1846 Galician peasant uprising (Rabacja) – against Polish nobility and Jewish leaseholders – as historical fantasy, interweaving documented events with folk myths of mermaids, witches, sorcerers, and the Serpent King. Rak's second escapade into Magic Realism, compared to the works of Gabriel García Márquez and Bruno Schulz for its fusion of the lyrical and the grotesque, and framed as a philosophical parable of power, poverty, desire, and truth, reinterpreting Polish national Mythology, crossed into mainstream acclaim, winning the Nike Prize (Poland's premier literary award), as well as all major Polish Fantastika awards: the Janusz A Zajdel Award, the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award, and the Nowa Fantastyka Award Polish Book of the Year. In addition, it also received international recognition through the European SF Society's Achievement Award for best written work of fiction. His Nike win was the first time that a Polish mainstream award went to a work of Fantastika, penned by a genre writer rather than a Mainstream Writer of SF (such as Olga Tokarczuk, who won it twice). The book, therefore, became one of the very few Fantastika novels to penetrate Poland's literary mainstream (see Jacek Dukaj and Stanisław Lem). Stage and operatic adaptations followed, along with translations into several European languages.

In 2024, he also published a Gamebook, Dunder albo kot z zaświatu ["Dunder or the Cat from Afterlife"], whose sentient Cat protagonist embarks on non-linear adventures in the Slavic mix of Magic Realism and urban fantasy.

Rak's longest project is the Agla trilogy comprising Agla. Alef (2022), Agla. Aurora (2023) and Agla. Abraxas (2025), an Alternate History or Parallel World tale set in late modern-era Central and Eastern Europe, where science has been replaced by Magic, and fantastical creatures live alongside humans. Following heroine Sofja through apprenticeship to a sorceress, the story combines a coming-of-age theme with a study of totalitarianism and Dystopias in the tradition of Polish Sociological SF. The first volume brought Rak his second Zajdel, Żuławski, and Nowa Fantastyka awards.

He also won the Śląkfa Award in the Creator of the Year category for 2019 and 2022. [PKo]

Radosław Rak

born Dębica, Poland: 1987

works

series

Agla

  • Agla. Alef (Warsaw, Poland: Powergraph, 2022) [Agla: hb/Igor Myszkiewicz]
  • Agla. Aurora (Warsaw, Poland: Powergraph, 2023) [Agla: hb/Igor Myszkiewicz]
  • Agla. Abraxas (Warsaw, Poland: Powergraph, 2025) [Agla: hb/Igor Myszkiewicz]

individual titles

collections and stories

  • Nic dziwnego ["Nothing Strange"] (Kraków, Poland: Małopolski Instytut Kultury, 2024) [coll: pb/]
  • Wszystko jasne ["All is Clear"] (Kraków, Poland: Małopolski Instytut Kultury, 2025) [coll: pb/]

links

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