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Flights
2018 International Longlist
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Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
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Maxwell
(last edited Mar 12, 2018 09:56AM)
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Mar 12, 2018 09:38AM
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so nice to see her here. I was already meaning to read it. Now is the time apparently :) I've heard from some people I trust she is quite Nobel worthy. Expecting a lot from this one!
I try get my hands on as many books from Fitzcarraldo as I can as they've barely disappointed me.
Robert wrote: "I try get my hands on as many books from Fitzcarraldo as I can as they've barely disappointed me."Yes pretty much any of their output this year would have deserved a place on the list - but this was the one (if it was only to be one) that I hoped would make it.
Incidentally worth knowing that in Australia this was published by Text Publishing - who also published in both Australia and UK another MBI longlistee, The Stolen Bicycle
My review
I love this quote:
Life always managed to elude me. I’d only ever find its tracks, the skin it sloughed off. By the time I had determined its location, it had already gone somewhere else. And all I’d find were signs that it had been there, like those scrawlings on the trunks of trees in parks that merely mark a person’s passing presence. In my writing, life would turn into incomplete stories, dreamlike tales, would show up from afar in odd dislocated panoramas, or in cross sections – and so it would be almost impossible to reach any conclusions as to the whole.
Some other reviews I found illuminating:https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/rev...
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blo...
http://tns.thenews.com.pk/travellers-...
Translator interview:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...
Paul wrote: "Some other reviews I found illuminating:https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/rev...
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://w..."
Thanks!!
Finished this last night and really, really liked it. I think I may have said before that I prefer books with atmosphere to books with plot, and this is one of those because it works by accumulating lots of different fragments until something forms in the mind of the reader. It takes some reading because the writing deserves time to be taken, but it also feels like a book best read in as few sittings as possible. If lifestyle allows, I would recommend setting aside some long periods of time to concentrate on this.
This was my first in the longlist, and it was beautiful! I loved the themes, and I'm not sure who to congratulate on the beautiful, almost tangible writing style – the author, the translator, or both!
My review - I found the parallels with books like The White Book, Sight, Reservoir 13, River, Fireflies fascinatinghttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This book is wonderful (quite literally). I am not convinced it is a novel - it is more of a mixture of short stories and short factual pieces with a loose thematic linkage. It does take a while to get used to the style, and the frequent changes of style and subject matter.The translation is very smooth, in fact you hardly feel that you are reading a reading a translation at all. My review.
