Fitzcarraldo Editions 2018. Soft cover, 416 pp
Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human
anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves
travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration
of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. From
the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip
Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg.
From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born
slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his
death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopin's heart as it makes
the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the
trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a
course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, and the harrowing story of
a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday
on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga
Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and
towards the core of the very nature of humankind.