Supposedly there’s no shame in hard work, and yet work is such a complex notion in today’s world. On one hand, it is supposedly the employee’s market, on the other the work is becoming more and more precarious. Olga Gitkiewicz takes a closer look at what work means in Poland at the beginning of the …
The grottiness and expense of London began to get to her; she got tired of gorging on the canapés at literary launches in order to scrimp on groceries, tired of the fuggy smell of cigarettes ground into the red-and-maroon carpeting of pubs, tired of the pipes bursting every time it froze in winter, and of …
A collection of short stories that does not disappoint. Taking us on a trip down the paths where reality meets imagination and the world becomes a bit weird. On one hand, each of those stories is very normal, things that would totally happen to people every day. But then each of them also has the …
Is there anything better than an unexpected dessert after a great meal? The story of the Witcher concluded in The Lady of the Lake, but the loose fabric of the short stories gave Sapkowki a way to weave in one more novel into the cycle. We meet our characters once more somewhere between the short …
A sprawling story of a sibling’s relationship. Told over the course of five decades and through a lens of their attachment to each other, but even more the house they lived in as children. It is a fairy tale with an evil stepmother and Hansel and Gretel at its core. But it is also a …
A book that shook me to the core. A tale of the survivors of the Canadian residential school system, written by a European immigrant to the country. It renders an outsider’s perspective on the story. Written with an open mind and willingness to understand the culture and society that on the surface feels so tolerant …
Continue reading 27 Śmierci Toby’ego Obeda – Joanna Gierak-Onoszko
Tom Hanks is one of those lovely and annoying people who are great at what they do. Then they also turn out great at other things they turn to. And we cannot even dislike him for it, because he is the definition of a Hollywood’s nice person. The good guy. Annoyingly this collection of short …
A long but worthy ending to the Witcher saga. Sapkowski balances between the darkness of the previous book and keeping the pace of the plot. It is always a challenge to finish a tale this long, but it succeeds here in both satisfying our need for closure, as well as avoiding the pitfall of definite …
A series of reportages from Spain, curiously and tenderly observing the country from an outsider’s perspective. Through the lens of the stories of several people Lipczak charts the incredible change, Spain went through in the 20th and 21st centuries. From a self-made millionaire obsessed with the idea of building his own city, through activists fighting …
With our main protagonists still dispersed the events take a lot darker turn. We leave the merry and only sometimes dangerous world of the short stories and initial novels. The world Ciri finds herself in is sinister and hell-bent on destruction. Geralt and Yennefer desperately try to reach her and help, but their efforts are …
Continue reading The Tower of the Swallow – Andrzej Sapkowski
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