Wroclaw, Poland
The Polish author of a best-selling murder mystery is on trial for allegedly committing the murder he wrote about. Novelist Krystian Bala said his 2003 book, Amok, was a work of fiction inspired by news reports of the 2000 torture and murder of a businessman. Police noticed that grisly details of the crime—which were never reported in the press—appeared in the novel, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Bala. More recently, they discovered that the victim was a friend of Bala’s estranged wife, and that the e-mails to a Polish investigative TV show praising the murder as “the perfect crime” came from Bala. The author insists he is innocent. “The police are treating my book as if it were a literal autobiography,” he said.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
The surprisingly successful world of Broadway musical rebootsThe Week Recommends The latest renditions of these classic musicals demonstrate just why they've had such long legs
-
OpenAI: A boardroom coup wrenches the AI world
Feature OpenAI employees are asking the board to resign
-
Man didn't realise chopsticks were lodged in his brain
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
