If the unnamed narrator of Tokarczuk\u2019s latest novel appears to bear certain similarities to Tokarczuk herself\u2014an abiding interest in mushrooms and astrology, say\u2014that\u2019s neither here nor there. The novel is set in a remote Polish village close to the Czech border: so close to the border, in fact, that when a visiting German tourist suddenly dies, border guards from both countries take turns moving the man\u2019s body back and forth to avoid dealing with the paperwork. As in the tour de force Flights (2018), Tokarczuk favors a storytelling style that more closely resembles a constellation\u2014horizontal, spread-out, continually growing\u2014over a single plotline. One chapter follows the life of a woman saint who was crucified by her father after suddenly growing a beard; others, the life of the monk who recorded the saint\u2019s biography and couldn\u2019t help feeling he\u2019d been born into the wrong body. These chapters alternate with more mundane, domestic ones in which the narrator exchanges visits with her neighbor, Marta, or the other villagers go about their lives. And while at first there might appear to be little connection between the various narratives, gradually, and then more and more quickly, the connections accrue. One character is driven mad by the sudden realization that a planet he\u2019d never known to exist had existed all along: \u201cIf you aren\u2019t aware of something, does that mean it doesn\u2019t exist?\u201d he wonders. \u201cIf a person becomes aware of something, does that knowledge change him?\u201d As a whole, the book is at once simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than it at first appears.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If the unnamed narrator of Tokarczuk\u2019s latest novel appears to bear certain similarities to Tokarczuk herself\u2014an abiding interest in mushrooms and astrology, say\u2014that\u2019s neither here nor there. The novel is set in a remote Polish village close to the Czech border: so close to the border, in fact, that when a visiting German tourist suddenly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}