Dogs of Smaller Breeds A Novel

Dogs of Smaller Breeds takes place in an in-patient women’s psychiatric ward in southern Poland. Perceptively and drolly narrated by a 28-year-old narrator, who may or may not be the pseudonymous Hund herself, we are offered short vignettes, unabashed and unapologetic glimpses into the lives of the sad women under psychiatric care. Hund doesn’t attempt to construct a comprehensive picture which would reveal some neatly packaged truth, and this is NOT a trauma narrative. Instead, she extracts scraps of memory which she arranges into an often dispassionate narrative: “The hospital turns out to be a laboratory for reality, in which the things we know, the absurdities, the conflicts between people and customs, occur in greater concentration. We can read this collection of snapshots, observations, and miniatures as a critique of society, a study of the violence inflicted on women, because most of the patients are not so crazy that they can’t remember what they’ve experienced.” (Justyna Sobolewska, Polityka)

Olga Hund was born in 1986. Her debut novel, Dogs of Smaller Breeds (2018), was awarded two of the most prestigious literary awards in Poland: the Joseph Conrad Award and the Witold Gombrowicz Award for debut fiction.