The Post-9/11 world in three Polish responses : Zagajewski, Skolimowski, Tochman

Kowal provides a rare look into Polish cultural responses to September 11, 2001 and the post-9/11 reality. The first analysed work is Adam Zagajewski’s poem "Try to Praise the Mutilated World", which predated the terrorist attacks but became part of the post-9/11 literary discourse through its reading. The second examined work in Essential Killing (2010), a film by Jerzy Skolimowski. The third response, discussed in comparison with Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World, is a hybrid literary work Córeńka (2005) by Wojciech Tochman, a representative of the "Polish School of Reportage". Kowal shows how the Polish responses, unlike most early Western reactions to 9/11, which focused on the attacks and their psychological impact on the West, offer a wider, in fact universal, perspective on history.