Omega

One day, the life of twelve-year-old Omega changes into a computer game. The key to winning each successive level is to perform tasks and orders sent by text message. Performing a task wrongly means losing your life. The backdrop for Omega’s adventures is Warsaw, but distorted by the author’s imagination. By playing with some classic literary and cultural motifs, such as the recently fashionable zombie, some bureaucratic time thieves inspired by Michael Ende’s Momo, and the sort of diagnoses elaborated by Jungian psychoanalysis, Szczygielski takes up an intelligent, postmodern dialogue with the reader. The clear, stage-by-stage structure of the game set within the refined and unconventional reality of an alternative Warsaw, and also the interesting narrative experiment, place Omega on a par with the novels of fantasy writers such as Neil Gaiman and China Melville. Just like them, Szczygielski moves away from the set formulae to create an original world full of verve and energy. As a novel about growing up, Omega could be said to belong to the “Bildungsroman” genre. Each level of the game represents the next stage in the development of the heroine’s personality. What will the final outcome be for her? A victorious step into conscious maturity, or a catastrophe that means losing her identity? • Recognition award in Halina Skrobiszewska Children Literature Contest and incorporation into the Polish Museum of Children's Books Treasure List, 2010 • Recognition award in the Most Beautiful Books of the Year 2009 Contest organized by the Polish Association of Book Publishers • Book of the Year 2010 in the contest organized by the Polish section of IBBY - International Board on Books for Young People, 2011