Polska literatura obozowa według Arkadiusza Morawca

The present article is a commentary on Arkadiusz Morawiec’s book Polska literatura obozowa. Rekonesans [Polish Prison and Camp Literature: Preliminary Remarks], in which a convincing hypothesis was presented that a concentration camp should be seen as a symbol of the 20th century. Morawiec illustrates his reflections with the monograph’s chapters on Nazi concentration camps, gulags, as well as Polish, Spanish and Japanese prison camps. In his book, the author postulates broadening the scope of literary and historiographic research on Nazi and Soviet camps to include the internment camps created by the other European regimes as well as the literary works created decades after the Second World War, with inclusion of questionable pop culture works. The author of this article sees this not only as Morawiec’s attempt at redefining the concept of Polish camp literature but also an attempt at re-creating it from scratch in order to showcase new research perspectives. The author emphasises the fact that each of the book’s chapters can be seen as a small monograph describing the camps and their literary representations that serves as a model example of academic humanistic writing. The author’s only point of critique is underrepresentation of the genre’s most well known works. Such literary works have been subjects of numerous studies, nevertheless Polish Prison and Camp Literature would have greatly benefited as monograph from exploring the oeuvre of Tadeusz Borowski, Seweryna Szmaglewska, Stanisław Grzesiuk, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Anatol Krakowiecki, Aleksander Wat in greater detail.