Gdansk novelist and short story writer Pawel Huelle spent his early writing career as an employee of the Solidarity Movement’s press office in the late 1980s. He subsequently achieved enormous success (both domestically and in translation) as a writer, and has been honoured with many prestigious awards. His first novel Weiser Dawidek (1987) – described by critics in Poland as ‘the book of the decade’, ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘a literary triumph’ and eliciting comparisons to Günter Grass and Bruno Schulz – has been widely translated. Huelle followed Weiser Dawidek with Moving House and Other Stories (1991), First Love and Other Stories (1996), Mercedes Benz (2001), and Castorpe (2004). The latter novel was published in English translation (Serpent’s Tale, 2007) and was shortlisted for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.