“To all the anonymous, forgotten princesses
The nuns, wives, mothers and rulers, about whom history is silent
The girls marked in biographies of dynasties with a sad ‘N.N.’”—the dedication in Elżbieta Cherezińska’s The Widow Queen
Tor Books has acquired the rights for the English translation of Elżbieta Cherezińska’s The Widow Queen, a duology inspired by the story of Świetosława, an influential real-life Polish princess who has been largely left out of history books.
The Widow Queen tells the story of a young woman who learned political maneuvering alongside her brother, Boleslaw the Brave, but was intended as a pawn in her father’s royal schemes. Nevertheless, Świetosława has more ambition than that; she means to be queen, and she will unite a kingdom to take the throne.
Elżbieta Cherezińska is a #1 bestselling and multiple award-winning Polish author who has written fourteen novels. The Widow Queen is her first novel to be translated into English, originally published as The Bold in Polish by Zysk. Maya Zakrzewska-Pim is translating and Lindsey Hall is editing.
When asked about her inspiration for this novel, Elżbieta said:
In Poland, Mieszko and his son, Bolesław the Brave, the first king of Poland, are very well known; they even appear on bank notes. Kids are taught about them. But nowhere in the textbooks is it mentioned that Mieszko had a daughter. When I found her in a historical source, I was surprised to learn that her history is so amazing. She is mentioned in a few serious medieval chronicles, however no one of them covers her entire, rich life. They describe only moments of her life, as a wife, mother, widow, banished or returning queen.
When I folded these into a sequence of events, a remarkable, strong character was revealed, a woman whose life was full of astonishing plot twists and who defeated adversity to win in the finale. She flashed through the chronicles unnoticed; not one of the chroniclers wrote down her name. For them, her husbands, father, brother and sons were more important. For them, those were the true warriors and rulers. The truth is different— she, Świetosława, was the one who unites the stories of them all. It was her life. Stories of the men were just a part of it, they were just episodes in her great, epic story.
With this book, I wanted to change the way of looking at that part of Polish, Scandinavian, and English history between 985 and 1017. Events in the history of several kingdoms which previously seemed to be unrelated get their guiding thread— Świetosłwa, the causative axis of events. Writing this novel, I wanted also to return her what the chroniclers took from her— her name.
The Widow Queen is coming from Tor Books in January 2021.
Oh, I’m looking forward to this! Already have a few friends in mind who are going to love it too.
Swietslava was the wife of two Viking Kings and the mother of three more. No way she didn’t lead an interesting life!
This sounds like it’s right up my alley. I’ll look forward to reading it and learning more Polish history.
Most people think the Polish SF is Lem alone. He is a giant and I like very much his writing, but he is not the only SF writer there. Konrad Fiałkowski and Jacek Dukaj certainly deserve to be translated too. Jerzy Żuławski is another interesting one – he deserves a special attention for his Moon trilogy written in early 1900s – formally a space opera, it is a book about the genezis of religion. In some ways he was a writer of the caliber of Herbert Wells and Kurd Lasswitz.
I never heard of Cherezińska. :( As far as I know she was never translated in Bulgarian, so I never run across her books, but hopefully after her books appear in English, they will also be transated in Bulgarian and I would rather read them in my language because translations from one Slavic language to another are usually much better that from Slavic to English. Just because the languages are closer.
I just say the announcement of the Chinese SF collection in another post, then this. Hopefully all these books will be successful enough (financially), to make other publishers follow suit.
Hopefully this dylogy will be a commercial success and more of Elżbieta Cherezińska’s works will be translated into English. She is an excellent writer. And I sure hope the translation will be decent. All the best from Poland :-)
If you’ve acquired the English translation why will this take so long to come out? :( Or does that mean you’ve acquired the right to translate it?
I want to read it now.
Fantasy? This is pure historical fiction, not a single dragon, elf, nor any other kind of mythical creature. I’m just about finished reading Hard (Polish title), and it’s easily one of the best, if not the best, historical fiction novels I’ve read in years (I never thought to find a writer of this genre that I would enjoy as much as, if not more than Bernard Cornwell). The news that this is finally being translated into English means that the West will finally see the “other” side of Europe during the Middle Ages. Brilliant!
Nowadays , Cherezinska is the best writer in Poland