Agnieszka Dale's characters want to find greatness, but discover greatness isn't their thing. But what is? And what is great anyway? In ""Peek-a-boo,"" a mother breastfeeds her child via Skype, at work. In ""Hello Poland,"" a man reunites with his daughter in a world where democracy has been replaced by user testing. In other short stories, people bow and are bowed to. They feed foxes or go fishing. They kiss the fingers of those they love while counting to ten. Dale writes about being Polish; being outside Poland; being a woman; being visible and invisible; from the East; from the West; from somewhere central. Dale's world is an intimate kingdom. It's a happy nation with no distinct nationality, a place where people still try, believe, or just are. ""The stories in this impressive debut collection are often quite odd - generally in a good way - with peculiar and perplexing endings that demand a second reading.It is, above all, the anxiety she expresses about our shared future that makes the biggest impact on the reader and keeps her stories - which begin so strikingly - alive beyond their final lines.""-Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

Agnieszka Dale (née Surażyńska) is a Polish-born, London-based author conceived in Chile. Her short stories have been selected for BBC Radio 4, Liars’ League London, Tales of the Decongested and The Fine Line Short Story Collection. Her feature articles have been published by Stylist, and her song lyrics performed on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune Live from Tate Modern. In 2013, Dale was awarded the Arts Council England TLC Free Reads Award. In 2014, her story ‘The Afterlife of Trees’ was shortlisted for the Carve Magazine Esoteric Short Story Contest and longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize.