Mikołaj Gryn­berg is Poland’s pre­em­i­nent Jew­ish writer. Work­ing across reportage, fic­tion, and pho­tog­ra­phy, Gryn­berg has devel­oped a mode of sto­ry­telling that embraces the com­plex­i­ty of Jew­ish expe­ri­ence in post-war Poland – one which prizes voice over con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, and which rel­ish­es in the poet­ic poten­tial of ambigu­ous mem­o­ry. Sean Gasper Bye has trans­lat­ed two of Grynberg’s books into Eng­lish: the short sto­ry col­lec­tion, I’d Like To Say Sor­ry, But There’s No One To Say Sor­ry To (2021) and, most recent­ly, his novel­la Con­fi­den­tial, which will be released by The New Press in Jan­u­ary 2025. In the fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Madeleine Wul­fahrt, Gryn­berg and Gasper Bye dis­cuss their trans­la­tion process, the uni­ver­sal human­i­ty of Jew­ish sto­ries, and more.

Mikołaj’s answers were trans­lat­ed from the Pol­ish by Madeleine Wulfahrt.

Madeleine Wul­fahrt: I’d Like To Say Sor­ry, But There’s No One To Say Sor­ry To was your first work of fic­tion, struc­tured as a col­lec­tion of first-per­son vignettes. Con­fi­den­tial, which charts the sto­ry of a Jew­ish fam­i­ly in post-war Poland, is your first nov­el. And yet, it main­tains some­thing of I’d Like To Say Sor­ry​’s frag­men­tary, anec­do­tal nature. It feels impor­tant to point out that, for the most part, Cen­tral-East-Euro­pean lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment is far less con­cerned with gener­ic dis­tinc­tions than its Anglo­phone coun­ter­part – books, such as your own, which occu­py a grey area between the nov­el and the short sto­ry col­lec­tion are not per­ceived to be ​“sui-gener­is” as they might be in the US. Did you con­ceive of Con­fi­den­tial as more of an over­ar­ch­ing nar­ra­tive from the very begin­ning, or was its struc­ture some­thing that emerged dur­ing the writ­ing process?

Mikołaj Gryn­berg: When I start­ed work­ing on Con­fi­den­tial, I thought I was writ­ing anoth­er short sto­ry col­lec­tion. How­ev­er, as I was writ­ing, it became clear that each sto­ry helped paint the por­trait of a par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly, which even­tu­al­ly became the book’s col­lec­tive pro­tag­o­nist. From that moment on, it was only a mat­ter of time before the book acquired a new nomen­cla­ture. I watched with inter­est as Con­fi­den­tial moved from the ​“short sto­ry” shelf to the ​“nov­el” shelf.

MW: I was remind­ed, read­ing Con­fi­den­tial, of Odessa Tales and Red Cav­al­ry—the Sovi­et Jew­ish writer Isaac Babel’s col­lec­tions of art­ful­ly inter­con­nect­ed short sto­ries. Do you have a par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship to Babel? Were his sto­ries on your mind while you were writ­ing Con­fi­den­tial?

MG: I appre­ci­ate Babel for the way in which he ​“helps him­self” to his­tor­i­cal facts and to his own biog­ra­phy. He was a great writer; he had restraint, and his sto­ry­telling had momen­tum. The trick is to go deep into a sto­ry while main­tain­ing sim­plic­i­ty of form and leg­i­bil­i­ty of message.

MW: The Pol­ish title of I’d Like to Say Sor­ry, But There’s No One To Say Sor­ry To is Rejwach: the col­lo­qui­al Yid­dish word (רווח) for rack­et or din. In one of the sto­ries in Con­fi­den­tial, you write about a Jew­ish home for the elder­ly in France in which Yid­dish has become the lin­gua fran­ca — the lan­guage to which the home’s senile inhab­i­tants have returned from the var­i­ous lan­guages of assim­i­la­tion. I was curi­ous — are you aware of Yid­dish influ­enc­ing your writ­ing, whether in the form of lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al his­to­ry, or even in the famil­ial vocab­u­lary passed down through generations?

MG: The word ​“rejwach” is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of Yid­dishism in Pol­ish. In Yid­dish it means ​“prof­it,” and in Pol­ish it means ​“hus­tle and bus­tle.” The word wan­dered, and in its jour­ney the mean­ing changed.

I myself have nev­er real­ly been in a Yid­dish-lan­guage envi­ron­ment. My grand­par­ents spoke Yid­dish when they want­ed to exclude my par­ents, and then when they want­ed to exclude me. It didn’t hap­pen very often. How­ev­er, I would often hear them whis­per cer­tain phras­es under their breath: oj, hab nysz kako­jeh (I don’t have the strength). So I didn’t get much of the lan­guage, but ​“Yid­dish think­ing,” for sure. I think it was the jokes that I heard from such a young age that played the biggest role. The fact that they are told for a rea­son, and that it usu­al­ly has some­thing to do with teach­ing you some­thing — their par­tic­u­lar struc­ture, and how it’s no acci­dent that they have no unnec­es­sary words or sen­tences in them. It was a good edu­ca­tion in sto­ry writ­ing. I think Babel went through it, too.

MW: Sev­er­al of the chap­ters in Con­fi­den­tial are named for Jew­ish hol­i­days — ​“Hanukkah,” ​“Sukkot,” etc — but few of them con­tain more than a pass­ing ref­er­ence to the hol­i­day at hand. I’m curi­ous to hear more about the rela­tion­ship between the Jew­ish cal­en­dar and the struc­ture of Con­fi­den­tial.

MG: I’m so glad you paid atten­tion to the Jew­ish cal­en­dar. You’re the only per­son who’s noticed it. It was impor­tant to me that Jew­ish time flowed through the book. The chap­ters bear­ing titles of Jew­ish hol­i­days them­selves aren’t about the hol­i­days them­selves. I treat­ed them as metaphors.

MW: An image that stayed with me long after fin­ish­ing Con­fi­den­tial was the col­lec­tion of nap­kins cov­ered in spilled cof­fee in ​“Cof­fee Marks.” A moth­er and son share a tremor which caus­es their hands to shake uncon­trol­lably. Over the years, their shak­ing hands have spilled a great deal of cof­fee on nap­kins, each of which has been saved and filed away in a desk draw­er. The image seems to me to encap­su­late so many of the book’s major themes — the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of trau­ma, and the messy stains of his­to­ry that the fam­i­ly has to sort and con­tend with. Could you speak more about the ori­gins and sig­nif­i­cance of ​“Cof­fee Marks”?

MG: It’s the best feel­ing when you write a small text, then you find that many impor­tant top­ics have crys­tal­lized in this short, dis­crete pas­sage. The nap­kins with cof­fee stains on them are, above all, sou­venirs of meet­ings. Stowed away in the desk draw­er for such a long time, they pre­serve their mem­o­ries and smells – both of which will even­tu­al­ly begin to dis­ap­pear. Even­tu­al­ly, a new gen­er­a­tion will come to clear out the aban­doned desk and throw away this bizarre col­lec­tion of stains. They’ll throw it away, because there won’t be any mem­o­ries on those nap­kins – because they were real­ly just in their heads and hearts.

MW: At the launch of Con­fi­den­tial at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty last Decem­ber, you said that ​“sub­jects that come from the inside are always more inter­est­ing.” Can you speak to your expe­ri­ence writ­ing ​“from the inside,” when your char­ac­ters so often find them­selves ​“on the out­side” of the Pol­ish Catholic majority?

MG: I think, first and fore­most, that I meant that it is inter­est­ing to touch on top­ics that seem more impor­tant to us than to others.

Each of us lives in their own real­i­ty, and none of them is one-dimen­sion­al. Indeed, I live in a coun­try that still defines itself as Catholic, although care­ful obser­va­tion of cur­rent trends will soon force us to reck­on with this opinion. 

I have no doubt that a place out­side the major­i­ty is far more inter­est­ing for a writer.

MW: In a sense, your prose ren­ders the divi­sion between the Jew­ish minor­i­ty and Catholic major­i­ty in Poland obso­lete — it sub­verts that very divi­sion by show­ing that Jew­ish sto­ries are uni­ver­sal. In the anglo­phone lit­er­ary sphere, where a far high­er per­cent­age of your read­ers are like­ly to be Jew­ish them­selves, do you per­ceive a dif­fer­ence in the way Con­fi­den­tial is positioned?

MG: I recog­nise that there is no greater com­pli­ment than that of uni­ver­sal­i­ty — thank you so much for say­ing so. I think that’s what writ­ing is all about — find­ing sub­ject-pre­texts. Those which tell a small­er sto­ry, actu­al­ly tell a greater one.

As for the obso­lete­ness of the divi­sion between the Catholic major­i­ty and the Jew­ish minor­i­ty, I can­not agree. It has its place in Poland and it’s a part of the nation­al land­scape. And it would not dis­ap­pear even if there were no Jews in Poland, which I hope will nev­er happen.

MW: Sean, this was the sec­ond book of Mikołaj’s which you’ve trans­lat­ed, and the first time you’ve trans­lat­ed mul­ti­ple books by the same author. Was the process of trans­lat­ing Con­fi­den­tial dif­fer­ent from that of trans­lat­ing I’d Like To Say Sor­ry, But There’s No One To Say Sor­ry To? If so, how?

Sean Gasper Bye: While the books are struc­tured very dif­fer­ent­ly, their styles have much in com­mon. Mikołaj’s writ­ing has the feel of say­ing exact­ly what it needs to and no more, and what’s unsaid is as impor­tant as what’s said. These were lessons I learned with Sor­ry that I could apply in Con­fi­den­tial. The biggest dif­fer­ence was that Sor­ry was made up of mono­logues, while Con­fi­den­tial has a nar­ra­tive voice that I need­ed to define.

MW: At Con­fi­den­tial​’s launch last Decem­ber, Mikołaj said that if he had thought he were writ­ing for a major­i­ty Jew­ish audi­ence, he wouldn’t have writ­ten Con­fi­den­tial at all: ​“Jews know these sto­ries,” he said. You point­ed out that, while Pol­ish Jews may know these sto­ries, Con­fi­den­tial por­trays an aspect of con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish expe­ri­ence which would be for­eign to many in, for exam­ple, a Jew­ish Amer­i­can audi­ence. How did you antic­i­pate or per­ceive the sig­nif­i­cance of Con­fi­den­tial​’s Eng­lish-lan­guage release?

SGB: It goes with­out say­ing that the post­war Jew­ish expe­ri­ence in the Unit­ed States has been very dif­fer­ent from that in Poland. I find Amer­i­cans often assume there are no Jews left in Poland or have dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing why Jews would want to live there. So part of what I val­ue about Mikołaj’s work is that it tes­ti­fies to Poland’s Jew­ish pres­ence and Jew­ish present, in a way that encour­ages nuance and sym­pa­thy. I wasn’t sure how read­ers here would respond to hav­ing their assump­tions chal­lenged; I’m very pleased to say the recep­tion so far has been warm. 

MW: I’m curi­ous if you read any oth­er books — in Pol­ish or in Eng­lish — to pre­pare for trans­lat­ing Con­fi­den­tial?

SGB: I read as much as I can about Jew­ish his­to­ry and cul­ture in Poland to make sure I’m mak­ing well-informed choic­es when trans­lat­ing Mikołaj. When cap­tur­ing his style, I often think about the work of cer­tain Pol­ish reportage writ­ers who favor min­i­mal­ism, such as Han­na Krall and Woj­ciech Jagiel­s­ki. A friend once com­pared trans­lat­ing them to mak­ing an abstract paint­ing using only two or three very care­ful brushstrokes. 

MW: I know that you work close­ly with Mikołaj through­out the trans­la­tion process — how do you believe this affects your final trans­la­tion? Is there a par­tic­u­lar aspect of your col­lab­o­ra­tion which man­i­fests itself in your Eng­lish rendering?

SGB: The help and guid­ance I get from Mikołaj is cru­cial. First­ly, as a non-native Pol­ish speak­er, I always have lots of ques­tions for my authors as I try to pin down pre­cise mean­ings and con­no­ta­tions. Sec­ond­ly, Mikołaj has often shared with me the back­ground or inspi­ra­tion for parts of his writ­ing. All of this helps me under­stand the text bet­ter, which is the fun­da­men­tal task of the trans­la­tor — if you can’t under­stand the text, you can’t trans­late it.

MW: As I men­tioned in a ques­tion to Mikołaj, so much of Con­fi­den­tial​’s nar­ra­tive is intri­cate­ly inter­twined with its char­ac­ters’ voic­es and sto­ries. Was the Pol­ish orig­i­nal par­tic­u­lar­ly idio­syn­crat­ic or col­lo­qui­al for that rea­son? How did you approach find­ing unique yet cor­re­spond­ing voic­es for the char­ac­ters in English?

SGB: In this book, the ques­tion of oral­i­ty came up most in the jokes cer­tain char­ac­ters tell. Trans­lat­ing humor is always fiendish­ly dif­fi­cult. The first thing is you have to dis­sect the joke, under­stand what exact­ly makes it fun­ny. Then you have to adapt it a lit­tle, not just so the word play works, but to match the rhythms and struc­tur­al con­ven­tions of Eng­lish joke-telling. I some­times test out my ver­sions by work­ing them into con­ver­sa­tions with unsus­pect­ing friends to see if they laugh.

MW: Olga Tokar­czuk pro­vid­ed a blurb for the Eng­lish-lan­guage edi­tion of Con­fi­den­tial. In the West, Tokar­czuk has come to rep­re­sent Pol­ish lit­er­a­ture on the world stage — par­tic­u­lar­ly after win­ning the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 2018. More sur­pris­ing­ly, through the mon­u­men­tal anglo­phone recep­tion of The Books of Jacob, Tokar­czuk has also become asso­ci­at­ed with Pol­ish lit­er­ary rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Jew­ish­ness, though she her­self is not Jew­ish. How do you see Grynberg’s Eng­lish-lan­guage releas­es as con­tribut­ing to the recep­tion of Pol­ish lit­er­a­ture in the West?

SGB: I think for US read­ers Pol­ish lit­er­a­ture is main­ly a blank slate. Tokar­czuk is the only ​“house­hold name” writ­ing today, but no one else in Poland real­ly writes like her. I see Pol­ish lit­er­a­ture as hav­ing huge vari­ety and cre­ativ­i­ty, a refresh­ing anti­dote to ​“MFA style” and com­mer­cial­ly dri­ven genre con­ven­tions. But I think Mikołaj’s work is tru­ly unique, whether in Pol­ish or in Eng­lish, and it excites me to invite Anglo­phone read­ers into some­thing whol­ly new.

MW: Your trans­la­tion prac­tice almost always pri­or­i­tizes mar­gin­al­ized Pol­ish voic­es. How do you see your work with Gryn­berg as part of this posi­tion­al­i­ty, and what upcom­ing projects do you have in the works?

SGB: I share Mikołaj’s view that the most inter­est­ing sto­ries are on the mar­gins. It’s also a pet project of mine to pro­mote glob­al Jew­ish voic­es. Jew­ish cul­ture is so inte­gral to West­ern cul­ture (and not only) that I think we have a lot to learn from all the vari­eties of Jew­ish experience. 

My cur­rent project is a new trans­la­tion of Kaz­imierz Moczarski’s mem­oir Con­ver­sa­tions with an Exe­cu­tion­er, out with Duck­worth Books in 2026. Moczars­ki was a World War II resis­tance fight­er unjust­ly impris­oned after the war. For near­ly a year, he shared a cell with the Ger­man gen­er­al who over­saw the destruc­tion of the War­saw ghet­to. Moczars­ki made it his busi­ness to under­stand what turned that man into the mon­ster he was; the result­ing book is chill­ing and eye-opening.