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A review by sambodamer
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
4.0
This was my first read by Olga Tokarczuk, inspired by her recent profile in the New Yorker.
I read it keeping in mind the Polish title- Bieguni. The bieguni, or wanderers, are an obscure and possibly fictional Slavic sect who have rejected settled life for an existence of constant movement, in the tradition of the travelling yogi, wandering dervishes or itinerant Buddhist monks who survive on the kindness of strangers.
This book takes you everywhere. Fragments of fiction, non-fiction, anatomy lessons, and drawings of maps keep the reader on the move. It’s a masterpiece in fragmentary storytelling. Between the hearts, travel psychologists, stomaches, islands, airports, fetuses preserved in jars, stuffed bodies in basements and cabinets of curiosities- the moral of the story is to move. Go. Keep going.
I read it keeping in mind the Polish title- Bieguni. The bieguni, or wanderers, are an obscure and possibly fictional Slavic sect who have rejected settled life for an existence of constant movement, in the tradition of the travelling yogi, wandering dervishes or itinerant Buddhist monks who survive on the kindness of strangers.
This book takes you everywhere. Fragments of fiction, non-fiction, anatomy lessons, and drawings of maps keep the reader on the move. It’s a masterpiece in fragmentary storytelling. Between the hearts, travel psychologists, stomaches, islands, airports, fetuses preserved in jars, stuffed bodies in basements and cabinets of curiosities- the moral of the story is to move. Go. Keep going.