Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski, Bill Johnston (Translator)

Overview

Winner of the PEN Translation Prize

A “sweeping . . . irreverent” masterpiece of postwar Polish literature that “chronicles the modernization of Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire” (The New Yorker)
 
Hailed as one of the best ever books in translation, Stone Upon Stone is Wieslaw Mysliwski’s grand epic in the rural tradition—a profound and irreverent stream of memory cutting through the rich and varied terrain of one man’s connection to the land, to his family and community, to women, to tradition, to God, to death, and to what it means to be alive. Wise and impetuous, plainspoken and compassionate, Szymek recalls his youth in their village, his time as a guerrilla soldier, as a wedding official, barber, policeman, lover, drinker, and caretaker for his invalid brother.
 
Filled with interwoven stories and voices, by turns hilarious and moving, Szymek’s narrative exudes the profound wisdom of one who has suffered, yet who loves life to the very core.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780914671022
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	11/04/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	500
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Wieslaw Mysliwski is the only writer to have twice received the Nike Prize, Poland's most prestigious literary award: in 1997 for his novel Horizon and again in 2007 for A Treatise on Shelling Beans. He worked as an editor at the People's Publishing Cooperative and at the magazines Regiony and Sycyna. In addition to the Nike Prize, Wieslaw Mysliwski has received the Stanislaw Pietak Prize, The Reymont Prize, and The Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award. Stone Upon Stone is widely regarded as his crowning achievement. Bill Johnston is the Chair of the Comparative Literature Department at Indiana University. His translations include Wieslaw Mysliwski's Stone Upon Stone, and Magdalens Tulli's Dreams and Stones, Moving Parts, Flaw and In Red. His 2008 translation of Tadeusz Rózewicz's new poems won the inaugural Found in Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award.

Read an Excerpt

Having a tomb built. It’s easy enough to say. But if you’ve never done it, you have no idea how much one of those things costs. It’s almost as much as a house. Though they say a tomb is a house as well, just for the next life. Whether it’s for eternity or not, a person needs a corner to call their own.

I got compensation for my legs – a good few thousand. It all went. I had a silver watch on a chain, a keepsake from the resistance. That went. I sold a piece of land. The money went. I barely got the walls up and I didn’t have enough for the finish work. It’s another thing that if Chmiel hadn’t gone and died, I probably would have gotten it done. Maybe not right away, but bit by bit.

Editorial Reviews

Like 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 through the eyes of Szymus Pietruszka, a seven-times–wounded member of the Polish resistance and a fun-loving, hard-drinking dandy in mourning over the long-lost peace of prewar village life. Having recently returned to the farm from a lengthy hospitalization following an accident that mangled his legs, Szymus sifts through memories of his family--dead mother and father, three brothers--and the many girls he has known, plans a family tomb, and struggles to preserve the land in the face of rapid change. Richly textured and wonderfully evocative, the novel renders Szymus as a distinctly memorable character, whose humor and hard-earned wisdom lend beauty to a bleak vision of a land destroyed by war and ravaged by history, and whose voice--sometimes warm, sometimes ornery, always elegiac--is undeniably original, his digressions and ruminations forming a story that reminds us that "words are a great grace. When it comes down to it, what are you given other than words?" (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of 2012 PEN Translation Prize 

Winner of Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award 2012 


"This is an epic novel about modernization in rural Poland." — Publisher's Weekly, 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read

Like 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 review

Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish. — Kirkus, starred review

Wieslaw Mysliwski's vast novel is an artistic accomplishment of the highest order… A masterpiece beyond the shadow of a doubt. — Henryk Bereza

A hymn in praise of life. — Krysytna Dabrowska

A 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 Supplement

A 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 National

Sweeping . . . 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

From the Publisher

Epic novel of rural Poland from two-time Nike Prize winner Mysliwski (The Palace, 1991, etc.).

A nonstop river of narration limns the long, eventful life of Szymek Pietruszka. In his wild youth before World War II, all Szymek wanted to do was drink, dance, fight and sleep with all the girls. After the Nazis invaded Poland, he joined the Resistance; following the war he nonchalantly held down various jobs in town: police officer, haircutter, civil servant. Yet in the end he returned to the small family farm, immersing himself in the rhythms of planting and harvest that ordered his father's life. Two of his brothers had moved to the city; a third, Michal, was swept up in the communist revolution, but came home a shattered man who never speaks and must be cared for by Szymek. Not so easy, since Szymek's legs were badly damaged when he was struck by a car while taking his horse-drawn wagon loaded with sheaves across the new paved road that divides his village. The world is moving on, warns the party functionary who refuses to approve his request for cement to build a tomb (that's not on the list of approved uses): "You can't live with a peasant soul any more." But the flow of salty, earthy talk from Szymek, his family and fellow villagers suggests that peasant ways will survive even the invasion of tourists looking to sample "traditional" culture without actually experiencing the boredom of tilling a field or milking a cow. Cognizant of the brutal realities that govern people tied to the land in a close-knit, quarrelsome community, Mysliwski reminds us of the pleasures inherent in such illusion-free existences. "You have to live," says the storekeeper who cheerfully beds down with Szymek (or any other man who strikes her fancy). "What else is there that's better?"

Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish.

Kirkus Reviews