How would the life of Jesus be told through the eyes of his mother? How can literature help us understand history and the nature of identity?

Maciej Hen was born in 1955 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Cinematography Department at the Film School in Łódź. For years he has been trying his hand at diverse activities, from music to all fields of journalism and television lighting design. As a prose writer, Hen has published four novels so far: Według niej (2004, DUE; the English translation, According to Her, published in 2022 by Holland House Books, was shortlisted to the EBRD Literary Prize in 2023), Solfatara (2015, W.A.B., 2016 Gombrowicz Prize and shortlisted for the Norwid Prize and the Angelus Prize), Deutsch dla średnio zaawansowanych, Segretario and one non-fiction book, Beatlesi w Polsce (The Beatles in Poland).

"People often tell me that my way of telling stories seems cinematic to them. Well, if that's so, I'm really happy. I just describe a scene the way I see it in my mind's eye, and everything comes up ready to use: props, colors, lighting, movements, close-ups, wide shots, sound effects, music, and dialogue. But I don't realize that it's cinema. For me, it's just writing. I wondered who could be a better narrator of the story of Jesus than his own Jewish mother? When I was young, as a European Greco-Christian, I was aware of some of my Jewish history, but writing According to Her, I tried to imagine the issue of someone considered to be a Messiah or prophet by some Jewish followers. What could be the genuine story of something that really happened or was told? This led me to write a realistic novel about how it could have been."

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