Paperback published by Legend Press 28th June 2021
The residents of an apartmentblock in centralKrakowaretrapped in their ownbuilding. All windows and doors are sealed, phonelines are downand the internet is off. Sevenpeople, cut off from the world.
It soon transpires that they are participating in a strange game played by the mysterious THEY. Suspicions are cast and conflicts break out. Paranoia thickens until finally,blood is shed. The institute is a compelling suspenseful thriller and an uncomfortable and troubling study of the most primal of instincts fear.
MY REVIEW
The Institute left my mouth dry with fear, with seven locked in their apartment, with no escape. The story didn’t end in the way that I had expected it to and for anyone who wants to read The Institute, you will never guess the ending.
While a family and friends are locked in their apartment, frighteningly there is no phone signal and no internet service working, to be able to call for help!. The family live in, The Institute on fifth floor on top of a pre-war tenement of Cracow. You may call them lucky as the family have one of the biggest apartments, with hundred and thirty square metres that has four bedrooms kitchen, a toilet and a bathroom, but when you become locked in the place it can seem rather small.
It’s impossible to leave The Institute as the lift isn’t working and the stairs are blocked off. Agnieska, Veronica, Iga, Sebastian, Jacek, and two of Veronica’s friends, can only go as far as the landing, where the lift and stairs are situated. The Institute is no longer an asylum, it’s become a trap.
At the window no one can hear their calls for help! The question is who would have wanted this family locked in with no way of calling for police to rescue them? Who would have done such a wicked thing to them? Who have Agnieska or her family or two of Veronica’s friends upset?
And who is ‘They’ keeping them all locked in and putting notes through their door?
I love reading this unique story that had me totally convinced of the sequences and with characters that go into overdrive to try everything possible to escape.
This story kept me turning the pages in hope that everyone would somehow escape.
Aboutauthor Jakub Zulczyk
Jakub Zulczyk is a rising star of the Eastern European literature scene.
His 2014 novel Blinded by the Lights was adapted to a TV series by HBO Europe and listened as one of the best TV shows made in Europe in 2018.
He is a successful screenwriter as well as the author of the bestselling Polish novels Do Me Some Harm, Radio Armageddon, Hound Hill and Black Son.
Danusia Stock is a freelance translator if interviews, novels, short stories, and film scripts. She has translated, among others, works by Krzysztof Kieslowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Andrzej Sapkowski, Marek Krajewski, Mariusz Wilk, Grazyna Plebanek and Jacek Dukaj, and compiled, translated and edited Kieslowski on Kieslowski. She lives in London.
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