Stone Upon Stone
"This is an epic novel about modernization in rural Poland."—Publisher's Weekly, 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never ReadLike a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness, Mysliwski masterfully renders in Johnston's gorgeous translation (Mysliwski's first into English) life in a Polish farming village before and after WWII. . . . Richly textured and wonderfully evocative.—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewJoyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish. —Kirkus, starred reviewWieslaw Mysliwski's vast novel is an artistic accomplishment of the highest order… A masterpiece beyond the shadow of a doubt.— Henryk BerezaA hymn in praise of life.— Krysytna DabrowskaA marvel of narrative seduction, a rare double masterpiece of storytelling and translation.. . . Mysliwski's prose, replete with wit and an almost casual intensity, skips nimbly from one emotional register to the next, carrying dramatic force. . . . He manages tone so finely, orchestrating a perfect continuity between the tragic and the comic and, ultimately, between life and death . . . In his translation Bill Johnston navigates Mysliwski's modulations with skill and the lightness of touch that is generally the face of profound labor. —Times Literary SupplementA marvelous, garrulous book ... The grandest example of a genre ...  Szymek's rustic voice narrates with a naivete and an eloquence that are equally endearing, reaching into every corner of the Polish countryside like a great shining sun.— The NationalSweeping . . . irreverent . . With winning candor . . . chronicles the modernization of rural Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire.— The New Yorker "[Myśliwski] belongs in the first rank of modern Eastern European novelists. . . . The prose ... is vividly concrete, blazing with precise physical details, and brusque (though never the less acute) even when it comes to thorny philosophical questions." — Los Angeles Review of Books