The world is getting stranger and stranger. Surprising and unpredictable short stories from a Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
Where does the feeling of strangeness come from? Is strangeness a quality of the world, or does it hide more within ourselves? The word “bizarre” comes from the French bizarre, which means “strange,” “peculiar,” but also “surprising.”
And that is precisely what Olga Tokarczuk’s latest book is—astonishing and beyond all categories. Ten short stories, each set in a different space: in Volhynia during the Swedish invasion, in contemporary Switzerland, in distant Asia, in imaginary places.
The variable rhythm of the short stories keeps the reader in suspense, so that for not a moment are they sure what will happen on the next page. The author throws them off balance, pushes them out of their comfort zone, and shows that the world is becoming less and less comprehensible. Elements of the grotesque, black humour, fantasy, and horror reveal that in reality, nothing is as it seems at first glance.
