Keynote
A tough and perceptive novel, full of black
humour, about the secret emotional and
intellectual life of a contemporary woman.
A daughter, wife, mother and lover
struggles not only with the dramas of her
family and love life, but also with financial
insecurity.

Selling Points
 The comeback novel of an important and
respected Polish writer.
 A brutally frank herstory written from
the perspective of a middle-class urbanite,
revealing the protagonist’s hidden
thoughts and feelings.
 An honest study of a contemporary
family, both the one the protagonist was
brought up in, and the one she created:
– Relationships between Agata and
her mother and sister and between
the daughters and their almost entirely
absent, yet abusive, father.
– A sincere study of a loveless marriage.
 A frank portrait of contemporary
parenthood, which brings to mind
the writing of Karl Over Knausgaard and
Rachel Cusk.
 A study of sexual passion.
 A panorama of Polish society in recent
decades.
 A novel about searching for happiness.

Description
Agata is 42 and unhappy. Her husband,
an unsuccessful lawyer, is abusive. Her life
of endless housekeeping drudgery, taking
care of her young children and freelancing
for a pittance frustrates her. She has
a difficult relationship with the family
she was born into, tainted by her father’s
emigration from communist Poland to
America when she was a child. The sisters,
brought up in the shadow of their father’s
newly acquired American wealth and their
mother’s heartbreaks, have grown apart.
Agata embarks on an affair with a married
man. Aware that the explosive mixture
may at any moment destroy the delicate
balance of her life, she vacillates between
different paths to resolve her situation.
In the background, and occasionally
in the foreground, is the experience of
Poland of recent decades – from the second
world war that traumatised an entire
generation, through the oppression
and poverty of the communist times,
the growing inequalities of the noisy 90s
to the stark political divides of today.
Happiness is the story of contemporary
forty-somethings. Brought up with
inherited trauma, they struggle to align
their lives with modern ideals of family
warmth, middle-class security, personal
fulfilment and happiness.

Target Market
Lovers of contemporary novels and
psychological prose.
Readers of feminist prose.
Those interested in Polish and Eastern
European culture and society.
Fans of candid literary writing about
family, such as that of Karl Ove
Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk and Deborah
Lévy.