Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Flights / Olga Tokarczuk; translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft.
New York: Riverhead, c2017.
308 p.

What a read! This Man Booker International winner was a journey. It's very long, very dense; it's made up of stories that eventually interlock in thematic ways. Stories stop and start up again later; characters face the same concerns in different stories. It's ingenious, demanding, and very rewarding to persevere through it. 

Taking as a central theme the idea of movement, of not settling, committing, planting oneself somewhere, but of always being on the go, in between, in transit -- Tokarczuk creates meditations on how this looks in actuality. In chapters that suddenly stop and then pick up 80 pages later, say, she investigates what this shows about a person's life.

Or she writes a short unconnected, sometimes wryly funny, piece about plastic bags migrating throughout Europe. Or the incidentals of travel itself, the trains, the routes, the languages. Since I am monolingually English, to my chagrin, and am reading this book in translation, I know that the writer and most other people speak more than one language. She reflects on this in a passage I liked so much I copied it into my commonplace book:

“There are countries out there where people speak English. But not like us - we have our own languages hidden in our carry-on luggage, in our cosmetics bags, only ever using English when we travel, and then only in foreign countries, to foreign people. It's hard to imagine, but English is the real language! Oftentimes their only language. They don't have anything to fall back on or to turn to in moments of doubt. How lost they must feel in the world, where all instructions, all the lyrics of all the stupidest possible songs, all the menus, all the excruciating pamphlets and brochures - even the buttons in the lift! - are in their private language. They may be understood by anyone at any moment, whenever they open their mouths. They must have to write things down in special codes. Wherever they are, people have unlimited access to them - they are accessible to everyone and everything! I heard there are plans in the works to get them some little language of their own, one of those dead ones no one else is using anyway, just so that for once they can have something just for them.”

This takes commitment to finish, though -- I found I couldn't read it alongside four or five other titles as is my usual habit. I had to concentrate on this one so I didn't lose the connecting threads amongst all the brief, fragmented sections. The style is really European, reminding me a bit of Sebald, or even in some places faintly of Saramago. It would have most likely have not made my radar if not for the Man Booker International Prize and resultant availability, but I am so glad it did. This was one of the best reads of the year for me. Definitely pick it up if you are interested in translated works that are thoughtful, philosophical, and challenging in a manageable way.