Radek Rak - A kígyószív legendája

Radek Rak's work tells the story of Jakub Szelá, the legendary peasant leader of the Galician uprising. Mixing facts with fantastical elements, balancing history and myth, he weaves legends out of miracles around the figure of the protagonist. We fall into a special fairy tale world, in which a peasant boy sets out to try his luck in order to get the mysterious, beautiful girl for himself, he wants to be a lord, he has to pass tests for this, he loses his heart, and he can only get it back by reaching the Snake King.

The poetic text is full of rampant eroticism, irony and humor, all fueled by the darkness of human hearts. This novel is about the good and evil in all of us, about unequal opportunities, about Galicia and Poland, about the blows of the master's whip, about lost hearts, and about everyone having to fight their own battles. The laws of the fairy tale cannot be defied, the hero actually has to defeat himself.

With this book, the author won Poland's most prestigious literary award, the Nike Prize, as well as the Janusz A. Zajdel Prize and the Jerzy Żuławski Grand Prize for Literature.