Only Those with Teeth Can Smile

Zyta Rudzka’s raw, ingenious writing tracks Vera, a sharp-tongued, working-class woman confronting old age, poverty, love, and loss as she attempts to honor her late husband with a proper burial.

From one of Poland's most important writers, this novel—which won the 2023 Nike Award, Poland's top literary prize—is Rudzka's second novel to be recognized by the award's selective jury.

Vera, an ex-hairdresser, sets out to find shoes for her recently deceased husband—an ex-jockey—to wear in his coffin. Despite the grinding poverty that has forced her to sell every last possession, she’s fiercely determined to give him the funeral he deserves. She runs into former lovers, male and female, and reignites old affairs, as her strange odyssey gradually reveals the losses that litter her past. “Vera’s no sweet old lady, no godfearing Catholic,” says her creator, “she smokes, drinks and curses, and her tongue’s as sharp as a razor.” For its terse, gritty language, as well as its inventive, often poignant storytelling, Zyta Rudzka’s Only Those with Teeth Can Smile won Poland’s top literary prize, the Nike Literary Award, in 2023.