The central story is that of a man called Kunicki whose wife and child mysteriously disappear on a small Croatian island where the family is on holiday. That the author plays with form is daring and admirable, but in order to work as a rewarding read, I think it needed to tell a story or, at least, to have an effect that was in the end complete, even if unsettling.

Is it a memoir? Or travel writing? Is it historical fiction or a contemporary novel? It is all of these, and that is perhaps a bit too much. It’s a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work….You can barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels.Īll of us who have battled our way through writing a novel will identify wholeheartedly with that.īut in the end my own response to Flights was one of bafflement. You have to remain within yourself all the time, ins solitary confinement. Early in the book comes this:Īnyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying yourself. First published in 2007 in Polish, and only translated into English last year (and beautifully translated at that, by Jennifer Croft) the book is filled with memorable lines and arresting and original images. This strange, wonderful and ultimately frustrating book from 2018 Man Booker International Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk has got me thinking about the importance of form.

Flights book olga tokarczuk