Contemporary literature

A sharp observer of Polish reality and a virtuoso of language, Dorota Masłowska returns with her long-awaited novel, Magical Wound. This latest work is, in fact, a collection of loosely connected short stories. These dozen-page narratives resemble the rapid-fire nature of TikTok videos—entertaining, moving, and intriguing modern readers whose attention span is increasingly fleeting.

Each story immerses the reader in a different piece of this fragmented mosaic, depicting characters struggling to find meaning in a world of contradictions—torn between Catholic-conservative dogmas and the neo-capitalist imperative to belong to the society of spectacle. We encounter women teetering on the edge of despair, men caught between physical desire and the relentless pressure of professional success, and a generation of young people suffering from enigmatic, perhaps even imaginary, afflictions.

Yet, the true strength of Masłowska’s prose lies in her masterful command of language. No one captures the contemporary Polish linguistic cacophony better than she does: a chaotic blend of patriotic-traditionalist discourse, advertising slogans, capitalist newspeak saturated with anglicisms and corporate jargon—all further muddied by grammatical inconsistencies, logical absurdities, and deliberate syntactic disarray.

However, Masłowska’s dazzling linguistic prowess alone cannot redeem a book that ultimately feels erratic, seemingly written without a clear structure, almost haphazardly. The final chapter, set on a dreamlike island inhabited by characters from previous stories, fails to bring cohesion to the overall narrative. By the time we reach the end of Magical Wound, we are left dizzy and overwhelmed, as if emerging from hours of mindless TikTok scrolling. If this was the author’s intended effect, it was not sufficiently articulated, refined, or fully embraced.

While Magical Wound is disappointing in many ways, it reaffirms Masłowska’s status as one of the most stylistically gifted Polish writers of her generation. If only she had taken the time to develop a more structured narrative, to sharpen her thematic focus, and to construct a clearer plot, she might have delivered a truly groundbreaking work.