I felt stupid for not having heard of her before. Take Olga Tokarczuk: a Polish household name, author of eight novels and two short story collections, translated in a dozen languages, recipient of numerous awards. Crucially, in our Trump/Brexit state of the world, they seem to have made it their mission to translate artists who are lauded in their home countries but aren’t that well-known elsewhere. Signed by Author(s).In just three years, Fitzcarraldo Editions have published remarkably intelligent books on everything from orientalism to football. First hardcover edition with signature are rare. Spine slightly lean, minor soiling at rear panel, sticker with a price, bar code sticker on the last endpaper.
Original pictorial cloth (showing map of Europe from around 1750), black lettering to the spine and front cover, descriptions and a short bibliography on the rear cover, a lot of maps throughout the text. The title of the book is also the name of an old Orthodox sect that believes that staying in one place exposes a man to attacks of the Evil, so constant movement serves the salvation of the soul. After mythographic prose, emotionally associated with the described place, the author surprised the readers with a novel that is a kind of study of travel psychology. "Bieguni" is not a travel book, but a book about the phenomenon of travel. Olga Tokarczuk - outstanding prose writer and essayist, Nobel Literature Prize-winner (for 'Bieguni',), The Man Booker International Prize (2018), two-time laureate of The Nike Literary Award (for 'Bieguni' in 2008 and for ' Ksiegi Jakubowe' in 2015). First edition, first impression, boldly inscribed by author on the title page ('Agnieszce - Olga Tokarczuk 20.01.10 Barolo'). Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Many consider Tokarczuk to be the most important Polish writer of her generation and Flights is one of those rare books that seems to conjure life itself out of the air.
Thrilling characters and stories abound- the Russian sect who escape the devil by remaining constantly in motion the anatomist Verheyen who writes letters to his amputated leg the story of Chopin's heart as it makes its journey from Paris to Warsaw, stored in a tightly sealed jar beneath his sister's skirt the quest of a Polish woman who emigrated to New Zealand as a teen but must now return in order to poison her terminally ill high-school sweethearta You will never read anything like this extraordinary, utterly original, mind-expanding book. Olga Tokarczuk brilliantly connects travel with spellbinding anecdotes about anatomy, about life and death, about the very nature of humankind. Flights is a series of imaginative and mesmerising meditations on travel in all its forms, not only the philosophy and meaning of travel, but also fascinating anecdotes that take us out of ourselves, and back to ourselves.
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