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On the Road to Babadag Andrzej Stasiuk

On the Road to Babadag By Andrzej Stasiuk

On the Road to Babadag by Andrzej Stasiuk


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Summary

The author's journeys - by car, train, bus, ferry - take him from his native Poland to small towns and villages with unfamiliar yet evocative names in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. This title presents his precisely observed and written meditations on travel and memory.

On the Road to Babadag Summary

On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasiuk

Andrzej Stasiuk is a restless and indefatigable traveller. His journeys - by car, train, bus, ferry - take him from his native Poland to small towns and villages with unfamiliar yet evocative names in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. 'The heart of my Europe,' he writes 'beats in Sokolow, Podlaskie and in Husi, not in Vienna.' 'Where did Moldova end and Transylvania begin,' he wonders, as he is being driven at breakneck speed in a hundred-year-old Audi - loose wires hanging from the dashboard - by a driver in shorts and bare feet, a cross swinging on his chest. In Comrat, a funeral procession moves slowly down the main street, the open coffin on a pick-up truck, an old woman dressed in black brushing away the flies above the face of the deceased. On to Soroca, a baroque-Byzantine-Tatar-Turkish encampment, to meet gypsies. And all the way to Babadag, near the shore of the Black Sea, where Stasiuk sees his first minaret, 'simple and severe, a pencil pointed at the sky'. Here is an unfamiliar Europe, grappling with the remnants of the Communist era and the arrival of capitalism and globalisation. This is an original, precisely observed and lushly written meditations on travel and memory.

On the Road to Babadag Reviews

"Stasiuk is one of Poland's best-known contemporary authors and On the Road to Babadag is a welcome addition to his growing English-language corpus...Unfailingly stimulating and ably translated by Michael Kandel" -- Toby Lichtig Times Literary Supplement "Stasiuk's journeys are vivid poetry... What formally also underpins Stasiuk's travels, and rather beautifully embodies his resistance to the future, is how his prose communicates the working of memory, mirroring its inconsequentiality. His accounts are fragmented, shuffled, continued later or not. Time breaks down as it is past; in his mind events cover space and time in an even, translucent layer" -- Julian Evans Prospect "Now English readers can enjoy the rewards of Stasiuk's entrancing attempt to stand in the way of progress. It's an exceptional writer who can rise to such an impossible challenge" Independent "A eulogy for the old Europe, the Europe both in and out of time, the Europe now lost in the folds of the map, On the Road to Babadag is valuable reading for UK readers. If we can't read our way around Europe, how will we ever find our place, our identity, within it?" Guardian "At once powerful, punkish, angry, and disorientating in its quest to probe into Europe's dirty laundry" Scotland on Sunday

About Andrzej Stasiuk

Born in Warsaw in 1960, Andrzej Stasiuk has risen to become one of the most important and interesting writers at work in Eastern Europe today. Author of over a dozen books and winner of many prizes, he came to writing in an unusual way: in the early 1980s, he deserted the army and spent a year and a half in prison for it. Afterwards he wrote a collection of short stories, The Walls of Hebron, about his experience, which became a huge success. He and his wife, Monika Sznajderman, run a small publishing house in Czarne.

Additional information

GOR011877681
9781846550546
1846550548
On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasiuk
Used - Like New
Hardback
Vintage Publishing
2011-07-14
272
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
The book has been read, but looks new. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included if applicable. No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins

Customer Reviews - On the Road to Babadag