A book-length interview with the Mother of God. No questions, just answers. Mariamne is an old Jewish peasant woman from Galilee, visited by a young Greek man who came to listen to her talk about her late son, Judas, John the Baptist and more.

Maciej Hen’s novel According to Her was published to acclaim in Poland in 2004; here he joins its English language translator Anna Blasiak to discuss.

Maciej Hen was born in 1955 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Cinematography Department at the Film School in Lodz. In the nineties he was a Lauder Foundation volunteer. As a prose writer he debuted in 2004 with Według niej, recently published in English translation as According to Her.

His other books are; Solfatara (2015 – Gombrowicz Prize 2016), Deutsch dla średnio zaawansowanych (Deutsch for Intermediates, 2019) and Beatlesi w Polsce (The Beatles in Poland, 2021).

His recent novel, Segretario, is scheduled for publication in 2023.

Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator and literature co-ordinator of the European Literature Network. She has recently co-translated Renia’s Diary by Renia Spiegel (Penguin Random House, 2019). annablasiak.com