I never got through much Sienkiewicz in Polish. I had
W pustyni i w puszczy read to me when I was a kid (but without the violence) and picked up
Ogniem i mieczem a few times, but just as often put it back down.
Something contemporary I enjoyed was
Jerzy Pilch's
Spis cudzołożnic. Proza podróżna.
If you like science fiction, there's
Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg. Less well-known than Lem or Zajdel, but good. And someone recently pointed me toward
Jacek Dukaj's
Lód but I can't vouch because I haven't read. It's a brick and comes out in English translation next year.
YA fiction: I don't know about nowadays, but if you don't mind older books, there's
Alfred Szklarski's series of "Tomek" novels. Basic boy's adventures, but they were popular.
Zbigniew Nienacki's another one. He wrote a bunch of mysteries about a character called "Pan Samochodzik." The more-propagandistic passages might leave you rolling your eyes, though. If humor's more your thing and you like stories set in schools, try
Edmund Niziurski.
Władysław Reymont's
Bunt sounds interesting and I've wanted to get my hands on a copy for a long time. It was published in 1922, is an allegory of the Bolshevik Revolution, and is about animals taking over a farm. Take
that, Orwell!
