Polish Hiroshima and Polish Manhattan : Cracow in the literary works of Jacek Dukaj

The article focuses on the depictions of Cracow in two Jacek Dukaj’s novels, Xuvras Wyżryn ol 1997 and The Plunderer’s Daughter ol 2002. In the former, set in the alternate reality, die city is a capital of Poland conquered by the Bolsheviks in the war ol 1920 and still occupied by the Russian Federation during the nineties. Polish revolt against die occupation, modelled after die First Chechen War, sets Cracow in a role of Grozny - but at the same time, the city acts as a lens, focusing various moments of much earlier Polish history. Thus, Cracow in die novel simultaneously bears various characteristics of the centre of General Government, Austro-Hungarian oasis of liberties, the capital of kings, and even pre-Christian setdement of Slavs. In die novel, it also plays a messianic role - it is destroyed alongside the Polish rebels by the Russian atomic bomb, allowing the birth of a national religion, allowing die future generations to create independent Poland. In The Daughter of the Plunderer, written right before the Polish accession to the European Union, late 21'1 century Cracow functions as a futuristic metropolis, although not affecting its historical monuments. Dukaj uses die city along with its future inhabitants as a pretext for a discussion about the purpose and possible consequences of real-life economic transformation, going on for about a decade and reflected in the novel as a deluge of cyberpunk-inspired inventions, the source of which is an alien city, full of technologies potentially dangerous to human culture, that are being copied and introduced on Eardi without any hesitation. In both novels, Dukaj uses Cracow as a metaphor of Poland of the economic transition era, discussing bodi the roots and die purpose of the latter, finding conclusions largely absent in the contemporary public discourse