Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (English) Paperback Book

Description: Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft 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.Olga Tokarczuk brilliantly connects travel with spellbinding anecdotes about anatomy, about life and death, about the very nature of humankind. 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 Chopins heart as it makes its journey from Paris to Warsaw, stored in a tightly sealed jar beneath his sisters 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 sweetheart… You will never read anything like this extraordinary, utterly original, mind-expanding book. 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. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Olga Tokarczuk is one of Polands best and most beloved authors. In 2015 she received the Brueckepreis and the prestigious annual literary award from Polands Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, as well as Polands highest literary honor, the Nike, and the Nike Readers Prize. Tokarczuk also received a Nike in 2009 for Flights. She is the author of eight novels and two short story collections, and has been translated into a dozen languages.Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Review A magnificent writer. * Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate 2015 *One among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century. * Economist *A novel of intuitions as much as ideas, a cacophony of voices and stories seemingly unconnected across time and space, which meander between the profound and the facetious, the mysterious and the ordinary, and whose true register remains one of glorious ambiguity…Flights is a passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness, for the acceptance of "fluidity, mobility, illusoriness". * Guardian *A novel in essays, a world-exploration in words, a soaring journey across space and through time. * Nicolas Rothwell *Tokarczuk examines questions of travel in our increasingly interconnected and fast-moving world...Trained as a psychologist, Tokarczuk is interested in what connects the human soul and body. It is a leitmotif that, despite the apparent lack of a single plot, tightly weaves the texts different strands—of fiction, memoir and essay—into a whole. * Spectator *Reading Flights is like finally hearing from a weird old best friend you lost touch with years ago and assumed was gone forever because people that amazing and inventive just dont last. Wrong—they were off rediscovering the world on your behalf, just as Olga Tokarczuk does. -- Toby Litt, author of HospitalI have always considered her a person of great literary abilities. With Flights I have my proof. This is one of the most important Polish books I have read for years. * Jerzy Sosnowski *Tokarczuks peerless travel guide is actually a guide to living. Every word, observation, reflection and story embraces the importance of staying mobile in thought as much as in being…This is as brilliant and life-affirming as literature gets. * Saturday Paper *Tokarczuk has a quizzical and highly observant eye, seeking and recording, turning perversely towards the deformed, the monstrous and abject… This all makes for excellent and entertaining reading as we are privy to scenes and descriptions from which our first reaction would be to turn away. * Otago Daily Times *Clever with a dry wit and beautiful black and white maps throughout the book, which added to the feeling that reading it was like stepping into a museum. * Good Reading *Flights is a fragmented, bursting-with-life novel…A lively and strange collection of portraits of unrelated characters, all in transit, woven together by the narrators essayistic musings. * Australian *Tokarczuk is one of Europes most daring and original writers, and this astonishing performance is her glittering, bravura entry in the literature of ideas…Flights is a narrative to accompany ones life—each new reading reveals a further destination, another idea to excite and engage the imagination…Flights is an international, mercurial, and always generous book, to be endlessly revisited. Like a glorious, charmingly impertinent travel companion, it reflects, challenges, and rewards. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Moving and profound. * LitHub *Disarming and wonderfully encouraging...Crofts translation from Polish is light as a feather yet captures well the economy and depth of Tokarczuks deceptively simple style. A welcome reminder of how love drives out fear and also a worthy Man Booker International winner for 2018. * Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) *Travel writing usually presents a linear narrative—as departures and returns easily correspond with beginnings and endings. But Tokarczuk complicates this. Her characters, like the books episodic structure, resist neat demarcations...As I neared the end of Flights, I realised I had stopped searching for a moral in each of these stories. The book is like a map: including disparate parts not because they cause or connect to each other, but because their contours help clarify a wider, impersonal whole. In this way, Tokarczuk shows that even the loneliest traveler fits into a bigger scheme. * Bookforum *"Flights" itself is a cabinet of curiosities, of "moments, crumbs, fleeting configurations"...The individual vignettes are themselves sculpted, and anchoring...Each self-enclosed account is tightly conceived and elegantly modulated, the language balletic, unforced. * New York Times *Pinwheels from somber to wryly funny to frantic with ease, and the myriad tones work together to build a layered, thought-provoking text…Tokarkczuks writing is endlessly penetrating and revelatory. * Music and Literature *Criminally good—the sort of novel that in its subtle imbrication of fragmentary narratives feels reminiscent of a great story like Austerlitz but at the same time entirely new. * Best Books of 2018, LitHub *Magnificently translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft, Flights has the scattered intimate quality of a personal diary, its magic wedded to its singularity. Its an unexpected, funny journey into that most elusive of places—the human condition. * Best Books of 2018, Entertainment Weekly *Tokarczuks stories encompass different epochs, locations, lengths, perspectives and tonal registers…She has an eye for the paradox of the encyclopedic project, which seeks at once to encompass a significant range of information and possibilities while also leaving room for expansion. * Literary Hub *A symphony of stories and fragments that ostensibly explores ideas of home and travel but really maps the anatomy of the heart and mind, this book triggers serious existential questions...Like Coetzee, [Tokarczuk] wears her intelligence lightly, but the soul-suffering is harder to conceal, and the cumulative effect is quietly devastating. * Mary Costello *It will make you want to quit your job, shed your identity, get on a plane, get on another, stay moving and see everything of this world that you can. * Powells * Promotional Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018. Prizes Winner of The Man Booker International Prize 2018 Winner of Found in Translation Award for Jennifer Croft 2018 Long-listed for Best Translated Book Award 2019 (United States) Review Quote A magnificent writer. Promotional "Headline" Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018. Description for Sales People * Flights i s a stunning collection of non-fiction musings about travel in the twenty first century and human anatomy, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft * Author Olga Tokarczuk is considered to be the most important Polish writer of her generation, and Flights was awarded Polands prestigious literary prize, the Nike Award, in 2008 * A literary and imaginative book that explores subjects such as anatomy and psychology through narratives and reflections on travel and the body, and life and death * For readers of Alain De Bottons The Art of Travel and Nicholas Rothwells Quicksilver * A series of meditations on travel in all its forms, connecting brilliantly with anecdotes about anatomy * Flights introduces us to a range of stories and characters from all walks of life * The stories range from the eighteenth century to the present moment, and are sprinkled with short episodes that connect them, such as musings on travel-sized cosmetics, Wikipedia and guidebooks Details ISBN1925603148 Author Jennifer Croft Year 2017 ISBN-10 1925603148 ISBN-13 9781925603149 Format Paperback Publication Date 2017-08-28 Imprint The Text Publishing Company Place of Publication Melbourne Country of Publication Australia Translator Jennifer Croft Publisher Text Publishing Language English DEWEY 891.8/538 Narrator Matthew Beard Illustrator Josh Van Reyk Birth 1927 Affiliation Lecturer, University of Fort Hare Position Professor Qualifications J.D. Alternative 9781925626223 Audience General NZ Release Date 2017-08-27 Pages 416 AU Release Date 2017-08-27 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:102278258;

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