Seeing the Life of Jesus through the eyes of his Mother: MACIEJ HEN - Award-winning Author & Filmmaker

Spirituality & Mindfulness · The Creative Process: Spiritual Leaders, Mindfulness Experts, Great Thinkers, Authors, Elders, Artists Talk Faith & Religion

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).

"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."

"I can tell you the story of my parents. They both lost most of their families during World War II, and they survived because they were quick enough to escape to the East, where there was no paradise either, but at least there was a chance to survive. So my father lost his father, one of his sisters, the sister's husband, and his brother. But the brother disappeared in Soviet Union, nobody knows how, but the others were murdered by Nazis. And as for my mother, she lost almost everybody. She had six siblings, and she managed only to take one of her sisters while evacuating to the East. So five of her siblings, both parents, and grandmother, all died in the death camp in Belzec."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Hen

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www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/autor/1271/maciej-hen

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