The Clam
The Clam (2005) is Marta Dzido's first novel. The protagonist Magda is looking for a job, looking for true love, looking for herself. And she can't find them, she can't fit into reality, the world seems unfamiliar to her, everywhere she seems to hit a wall that repels her or maybe attracts her?
The Clam is a fragmentary novel, extremely rich in references to pop culture. The punctuation is as "confused" as the character's life; the dialogue is as chaotic as the character's thoughts; proper names start with lowercase letters because they don't deserve more; it's not always clear who's speaking because it doesn't matter - and the result is a jarring work of social-Feminist flavor and with a touch of post-modernism, in which the author experiments with the protagonist.
How will it all end - the novel has two endings, optimistic and pessimistic. And what would the reader choose?
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
Marta Dzido
Born in 1981, Marta Dzido is a writer, documentary filmmaker and film editor. Graduated from the Polish Film School in Łódź. Author of "A Mark Left by Mom" (2003 - translated into Vietnamese), "The Clam" (2005 - translated into Bulgarian and Vietnamese), "Matrioszka" (2013), "Strawberry season" (2021 - translated into Czech), and a non-fiction book "Women of Solidarity" (2016). Director of photography of the documentary "Underground Women’s State" (2009) and co-director of "Downtown" (2010), a documentary that has won the Hollywood Eagle Documentary Award in 2011. Screenwriter, co-director and editor of “Solidarity according to Women” (2014, Krzysztof Kieslowski Beyond Borders Award, special award of Polish Film Institute) and docudrama "Women Power" (2018).
