Ольга Токарчук: Flights

Born in 1962 in Poland, Olga Tokarczuk is one of her country’s most beloved authors. In 2015 she received the Brückepreis and the prestigious annual literary award from Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, as well as Poland’s highest literary honour, the Nike Award, and the Nike Readers’ Prize. Tokarczuk also received a Nike in 2008 for Flights . She is the author of eight novels, two short story collections and has been translated into a dozen languages.

Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN and National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize, and her translations from Polish, Spanish and Ukrainian have been published widely. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

1 Vienna — Narrenturm — Pathologisch-anatomisches Bundesmuseum, Spitalgasse 2

2 Vienna — Josephinum, Museum des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin, Währingerstrasse 25

3 Dresden — Deutsches Hygiene Museum, Lingnerplatz 1, Dresden Gläesernen Menschen

4 Berlin — Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Charitéplatz 1

5 Leiden — Museum Boerhaave, St. Caecilia Hospice, Lange St. Agnietenstraat 10

6 Amsterdam — Vrolik Museum, Academisch Medisch Centrum, Meibergdreef 15

7 Riga — Pauls Stradins Museum of the History of Medicine, Antonijas iela 1, and the Jekabs Primanis Anatomy Museum, Kronvalda bulvāris 9

8 Saint Petersburg — Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamerr), 3, Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya

9 Philadelphia — Mütter Museum, 19 South 22nd Street

The maps and drawings are taken from The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps , © The Pepin Press, Amsterdam, 2005.

1 Comparative overview of important rivers (no date)

2 Details of St Petersburg (1850)

3 Boufarik, Algeria (1882)

4 Chinese map (1984)

5 Parc Monceau (1878)

6 Chinese map (1984)

7 Europe, circa 1750

8 Novaya Zemlaya, Russia (1855)

9 Russian map (no date)

10 Plan of Jerusalem based on a manuscript from 1200 (no date)

11 New York, USA (no date)

12 The wanderings of Odysseus representend on a map from the Odissey (1911)

The translator wishes to thank Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the Institute for the Book in Krakow, the National Endowment for the Arts, Esther Allen and Sean Bye for their help with and support of this project.

‘A novel in essays, a world-exploration in words, a soaring journey across space and through time.’ Nicolas Rothwell

‘Tokarczuk is interested in what connects the human soul and body. It is a leitmotif that… weaves the text’s different strands—of fiction, memoir and essay—into a whole.’ Spectator

‘A magnificent writer.’ Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Laureate in Literature, 2015

‘One among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century.’ Economist

‘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 don’t last. Wrong—they were off rediscovering the world on your behalf, just as Olga Tokarczuk does.’ Toby Litt, author of Hospital

‘I have always considered Tokarczuk 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

‘Olga Tokarczuk is a household name in Poland and one of Europe’s major humanist writers, working here in the continental tradition of the “thinking” or essayistic novel. Flights has echoes of W.G. Sebald, Milan Kundera, Danilo Kiš and Dubravka Ugrešić, but Tokarzcuk inhabits a rebellious, playful register very much her own… Flights is a passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness… Hotels on the continent would do well to have a copy of Flights on the bedside table. I can think of no better travel companion in these turbulent, fanatical times.’ Guardian

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Copyright © Olga Tokarczuk 2007

Translation copyright © Jennifer Croft 2017

The moral right of Olga Tokarczuk to be identified as the author and Jennifer Croft as the translator of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published as Bieguni in Poland by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków in 2007

First published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017

This edition published by the Text Publishing Company in 2017

Cover design by Marek Pawlowski © Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 2007

All rights reserved

The cover illustrations and internal maps and drawings are taken from The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps © The Pepin Press, Amsterdam, 2005

Page design by Ray O’Meara

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Tokarczuk, Olga, author.

Title: Flights / by Olga Tokarczuk.

ISBN: 9781925603149 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781925626223 (ebook)