I became very curious when Tokarczuk won the Man Booker Prize for Flights and then even more intrigued when she recently won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature. (The award was postponed a year due to internal controversy and dissension among the Nobel Committee.) Although a well known and respected author in her native Poland, Flights was one of Tokarczuk’s first novels to be translated into English. After it won the Man Booker Prize, Tokarczuk mused, “[s]ometimes I wonder how my life would have worked out if my books had been translated into English sooner, because English is the language that’s spoken worldwide, and when a book appears in English it is made universal, it becomes a global publication.” I think we will be making up for lost time as there is no doubt in my mind that audiences everywhere will want to hear more from this gifted author.

The narrator of Flights, is compelled to travel. It is part of her genetic make-up, an almost physical resistance to staying in one place. This powerful need to move, to go, to explore and never stay in one place too long drives her and in the process she collects stories, vignettes, and composes meditations on travel and how it impacts the human body.  The book is what Tokarczuk calls a “constellation” of stories, encounters, and facts about the “human body in motion” that the narrator collects over the course of her travels. We learn how Chopin’s heart was smuggled back into Warsaw by his adoring sister, or the development of a strange preservation method for human organs, the disturbing story of a husband who experiences a psychotic break when his wife and young son who were lost for a few days, inexplicably return, as well as exploring the psychology of travel and the strange disassociation that often occurs when we are away from all that anchors us in our lives. Yet, throughout these varied and seemingly unconnected stories, the insights she imparts on wandering, and the ways the human body must adapt, change and embrace its new surroundings are revelatory and profound.

Although this is not my normal kind of book, the journey I took with Tokarczuk was intriguing and enlightening. I look forward to reading her next book Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead which has just been released in English.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Everyone

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.