Hanna Krall

Hanna Krall was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents were Salomon and Felicja Jadwiga Krall. Her father and other relatives died during the Holocaust, while she and her mother survived with the help of several Catholic Poles, constantly moving between hiding places. In 1955, Hanna graduated from the journalism school at the University of Warsaw and began working as a journalist for major Polish newspapers. She lived in the Soviet Union from 1966 to 1969 as a foreign correspondent for the weekly Polityka. Her experiences during that period provided material for three volumes of collected articles. After the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981, she became a freelance writer and novelist. From 1982 to 1987, she also worked for the Tor film studio, where she collaborated on screenplays with director Krzysztof Kieślowski, among others. Hanna first made her name in 1977 with the publication of Shielding the Flame, a nonfiction work based on an interview with cardiologist Marek Edelman, one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) and a leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Her most successful book has been the novel Chasing the King of Hearts (2006), which was translated into 17 languages and earned many awards, including the German Würth Preis for European Literature in 2012 and the Found in Translation Award in 2014. She has been married since 1959 to journalist Jerzy Szperkowicz, with whom she has a daughter.