The Axe and The Frozen Sea: Agnieszka Szpila

Monday, July 20, 2026

Agnieszka Szpila - Hexes Of The Deadwood Forest (Footnote, 2026) **

As you can read on the cover, one of my favourite authors described this novel as "a torpedo of a book", which led me to purchase it, intrigued by its title and my current reading on the history of witch hunts in the middle ages and early modern times.

The plot is sufficiently bizarre to have captured my interest: a Polish oil company CEO, in a strange delusional moment films herself having sex with a tree, after which she goes back in time to meet some of her ancestors who created a feminist and ecologist religion and congregation, called "The Earthen Ones", who fight the patriarchy.

This plot could have been interesting material for a good story, yet Szpila uses her talent to keep breaking taboos like an adolescent with limited discipline. She is apparently herself fascinated by the 'religion' she creates, which is never a good basis for literature. She calls her own novel 'post-porn', whatever that means.

The case for feminism and ecology deserves better than this puerile fantasy.

Das gefrorene Meer in uns

“Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich”.

(Franz Kafka, brief aan Oskar Pollak, 27 januari 1904)

THE AXE FOR THE FROZEN SEA IN US “If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” ― Franz Kafka