Flights
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.
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.
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Community Reviews
This was a big hit or miss for me. It's a collection of writings, I thought initially connected by the different meanings of the term "flights." We get lots of stories about air travel, and people fleeing their lives, if only temporarily. But there are also stories and studies of anatomy and the collecting and saving of body parts in formaldehyde, and that was just too clinical for me. Plus I wanted to know if we'd ever come back to Kunicki, whose wife and child mysteriously disappeared. Why did we have to get bogged down in this scientific anatomy shit when people are missing! What happened to them?? (We do return, eventually, to the story of Kunicki and his family.) Overall, the hits outweigh the misses, and they're well worth the read (just skim/skip the rest).
极其优美的文字却似是杂乱无章的情节，波兰2019诺贝尔文学奖得主Olga Tokarczuk在Flights 这本书里给了我们一个无限伸展的空间，各等人士可以在此找到各等不同的人生解读，或迷失于此。即使书名都有几重含义，飞翔？逃避？
作者以第一人称顺着在世间不同角落如梦游般游荡的线索，在几大块独立的重笔墨中穿插了很多跳跃的毫无关联的小故事。其中有年轻丈夫因了妻儿在休假期间意外失踪数日而神魂颠倒乱了方寸；解剖学家的遗孀借着逝夫在领域界的声望引诱年轻学者来孤岛与之苟欢；仍不断为被截去的下肢的搔养感而倍受困扰的孤独的解剖天才；撒手逃离日复一日心力交瘁地照顾弱智儿的机械重复日子的母亲；疑似最早完整制成的医用解剖尸骨最终远度重洋随着俄罗斯暴发户落入他乡；辗转于各机场的自愿者向过客介绍游客心里学....。
作者在种种的无序中，是想告诉我们生活本就是一团乱麻，感受过了，理清枝结已不重要？或是人生只是一个个无关联的驿站，经历过，刻入记忆，终点已无意义？百人有百解，也许这就是一本好的文学作品优秀之处。
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