Applied to children the test quite accurately predicts the directions of their further development.

All Saints Mountain, the longest story in the collection, almost novella-size, is narrated by a renowned psychologist, author of a popular psychological test. Tokarczuk makes it clear that despite all the advances in technology, human loneliness and suffering is always the same. Two other stories get 'honorable mentions' from me. The emotional impact is almost as strong as in the saddest story about human impermanence I have ever read, The Foxes Come at Night by Cees Nooteboom. It would be hard not to shed a tear reading the distressing last paragraph. I can imagine hearing the man's terrified scream 'Where is my world?' His entire universe of memories is gone. The woman patiently explains that he must be wrong, there have never been socks without seams, stamps have always been round, things have always been like that and to calm the man's nerves she offers him home-made liqueur. Alarmed, he asks a neighbor about his strange discoveries. He also notices that the postage stamps are round, there are no pens that write in blue, there is a 0 on the face of the clock instead of 12, etc. An elderly widower notices one morning that the socks he is putting on his feet have seams along their whole length, from toes, through the instep, to the cuff. Almost like that famous René Magritte's picture, Time transfixed showing a locomotive, at full steam, jutting out of a fireplace - everything is superbly realistic except for the combination.īecause of my advanced age I passionately love one of the stories, titled Seams ( Szwy in Polish). Some aspects of the reality that they present - not all! - have been distorted in certain ways. There are ten stories in this collection and indeed they all are wonderfully 'off-center.' To me they are kind of like literary equivalents of surrealist paintings.

Tokarczuk borrowed it directly from French or English, maybe attempting to make the title sound a little peculiar. In Polish the title is Opowiadania bizarne whose English equivalent would be Bizarre Stories, except that there is no such word in Polish as 'bizarne.' Ms.

As far as I know, the book does not yet have an English title and it is a bit challenging, at least for me, to find a fitting one. I haven't yet read that novel but have received a copy of Tokarczuk's newest book from Poland. The great Polish writer has since received the prestigious International Man Booker Prize for Flights (Polish title Bieguni). ' He has a feeling of strange suspension like in the childhood, when the spaces around him had not yet been filled with meanings and each event seemed unique and nonrecurring.'Ī few months ago I reviewed Olga Tokarczuk's Run Your Plow Through the Bones of the Dead.

Bieguni in english