Staff Pick
Flights is a majestic argosy of compassion for those who are driven by the impulse to flee, vanish, or escape in defiance of our shared and fallible vessel, the human body. Tokarczuk links motion with mortality throughout, taking sprightly turns between evaluations of airport psychology and grisly depictions of preserved limbs suspended in jars of formaldehyde. What remains is an unmistakable admiration for a kind of ambulatory soul-searching, a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other auditing of nomadic predilections and the pursuit of preservation. A luminous success. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOK INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
A visionary work of fiction with "echoes of Sebald and] Kundera . . . There's] no better travel companion in these turbulent, fanatical times" (The Guardian).
A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
Review
“A magnificent writer.” Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
Review
”One among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century.“ The Economist
Review
”A household name in Poland and one of Europe’’s major humanist writers, [with] echoes of W. G. Sebald [and] Milan Kundera, Tokarczuk inhabits a rebellious, playful register very much her own…. Flights is a passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness…. I can think of no better travel companion in these turbulent, fanatical times." The Guardian
Synopsis
2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATUREWINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZENAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLYSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WARWICK PRIZE FOR WOMEN IN TRANSLATION A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." --Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." --Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." -- Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." -- Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
About the Author
Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland’s most celebrated and beloved authors, a winner of the Man Booker International Prize, as well as her country’s highest literary honor, the Nike. She is the author of eight novels and two short story collections, and has been translated into a dozen languages. Her work has appeared in n +1, BOMB, and Asymptote.