Every room hides a secret
Every room hides a secret
Translation rights: Story House Egmont Sp. z o.o., tomasz.kolodziejczak@egmont.pl
The graphic novel Agency “Rygor”: The Guests of Hotel Arago is unlike any other Polish historical title in that it was created with the active collaboration of the country’s Foreign Intelligence Agency. Tobiasz Piątkowski and Marek Oleksicki, creators of the critically acclaimed and popular Bradl, return to wartime stories, this time about a foreign mission of Polish intelligence officers in North Africa.
The first volume of Agency “Rygor” depicts the difficult beginnings of the titular Polish spy network in Algeria, initiated in 1941 by a Polish officer called Mieczysław “Rygor” Słowikowski. With time, this network spread all over North Africa, financed mostly by profits from the porridge oats factory which Słowikowski had set up. The African country was a colony of Vichy France at the time, a place teeming with spies from all the sides involved in the war, which features abundantly in The Guests of Hotel Arago. Here, every room hides a secret and the eponymous guests don’t always leave the hotel alive.
In the first spread of the novel, the creators show the most important – from the Polish perspective – stages of the first years of World War II. The temporal planes in Agency “Rygor” are intermingled: we get, for example, retrospections from Mieczysław Słowikowski’s earlier activities in France, where he smuggled Polish soldiers to England. But the crucial part of the work takes place in sunny Algiers, drawn by illustrator Marek Oleksicki in his characteristic, film noir-inspired graphic style.
These creative choices mean that the plot of Agency “Rygor” invites associations with certain frames from Casablanca. Słowikowski was, incidentally, considered to be a model for one of the film’s characters, Victor Laszlo. And although these are key elements of this graphic novel, let’s bear in mind that it is first and foremost a story about Polish wartime exiles, in this case intelligence officers, who – far away from their homeland – were paragons of Polish resourcefulness and dedication at a time when the country was under German occupation.
Tomasz Miecznikowski
Translated by Marta Dziurosz
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
