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Winter 1885, in a village near Kraków. Young Franciszka gives birth to her first child. Her foster mother, a renowned midwife, accompanies her during the birth. At the same time, a child is also born in a nearby manor house. Franciszka is hired as its wet nurse. A series of circumstances leads her to help local women deliver their children, and thanks to unexpected support, she begins training at a midwifery school in Kraków. She returns from Kraków to her home village enriched by her knowledge of childbirth, which painfully clashes with the rural reality of poverty and superstition. She is drawn into a whirlwind of passion and grand history.
The Midwives is a monumental and captivating story, inspired by the life of the author's great-grandmother, about a woman who dealt with life and death, loved and provided help at any time of day and night, even during the turmoil of war.
Inspired by the life of a Polish village midwife, this unforgettable story follows three generations of women whose work places them at the intimate center of two world wars. As men march off to battlefields, these unseen and overlooked women fight their own battles, becoming unshakable pillars of resilience and the enduring heartbeat of their communities. Against the backdrop of a changing Poland, they navigate through hardships and the quiet triumphs of everyday life, preserving wisdom and hope for the generations to come.
"A novel written with love and literary panache. I highly recommend it!"
— Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak , author of The Peasants and The Servants for Everything
"The Midwives captured my imagination from the very beginning and then tied me to itself, page after page, with a powerful umbilical cord of action. I can't decide whether the book's greatest strengthis its brilliant recreation of our great-grandmothers' midwifery skills or its moving story about the intertwining lines of life and death. One thing I'm certain of: when we say a natural birth occurred, that nature is a woman.
— Elżbieta Cherezińska, author
" The world of The Midwives is presented with tenderness, but without anaesthesia. Dirt is dirt, violence is violence, and love and wisdom run counter to religiosity. In the background, wars rage, fires, plagues, and pogroms break out. Children are born and depart, some to school, others to death, because great history disregards the daily toil of women. This is a true and wise novel about embracing life and respecting death."
— Barbara Sadurska , writer, winner of the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Award
“Emotion, curiosity, bewilderment, compassion, a transformation in consciousness instead of the expected: fear, disgust, incomprehension, alienation, rejection. This is what Sabina Jakubowska’s The Midwives does to the reader. The book takes your breath away, just like when you experience a sudden revelation, facing a reality of which you were aware, but which only art has managed to make visible and comprehensible. […] This extremely well-researched novel gives the personalities, events and micro-worlds of the characters visual authenticity and psychological credibility. The noble tricks of literature embroil us emotionally in the characters’ experiences and make us the author’s companions on a personal journey to the world of her ancestors, led by her great-grandmother, the legendary midwife whose diary became an inspiration for wise and beautiful fiction.”
— Ryszard Koziołek – chairman of the jury, EU Prize for Literature