"Lying in bed in Gotland after a writer's conference, thinking about his compulsive desire to travel...and the uncomfortable tensions this desire creates...the narrator of Salki starts recounting tragic stories of his family's past, detailing their...
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Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung, Bibliothek / Bibliographieportal
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"Lying in bed in Gotland after a writer's conference, thinking about his compulsive desire to travel...and the uncomfortable tensions this desire creates...the narrator of Salki starts recounting tragic stories of his family's past, detailing their lives, struggles, and fears in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. In these pieces, he investigates various 'salkis'...attic rooms where memories and memorabilia are stored...real and metaphorical, investigating old documents to better understand the violence of recent times. Winner of the prestigious Gdynia Literary Award for Essay, Salki is in the tradition of the works of W.G. Sebald and Ryszard Kapuscinski, utilizing techniques of Polish reportage in creating a landscape of memory that is moving and historically powerful; 'It all blends here unexpectedly: that past and memory with the present and space. At times, your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading'...Andrzej Stasiuk; 'A masterful tribute to Georges Perec. There is no future or past, but rather chains of ideas and associations that complement each other. In that sense, Nowicki's book reminds one of The Rings of Saturn by Sebald'...Polityka; Wojciech Nowicki is a Polish essayist, journalist, critic, photographer, and even writes a culinary column. He is also the co-founder of the Imago Mundi Foundation devoted to promoting photography. Salki is his first book to be translated into English. Jan Pytalski is a graduate of the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw, and has an MA in translation from the University of Rochester"...Provided by publisher
"This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. Focused on the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, the authors look not so much at similarities as at the...
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"This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. Focused on the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, the authors look not so much at similarities as at the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. The introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-and-take with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Those in charge had to negotiate the precarious terrain of local cultural and political controversies, caught between tradition and innovation in some countries, or, in others, between a sincere interest in the new concept of art and a complete refusal to accept new rules. Paradoxically, among all the different experiences of introducing, importing imposing Socialist Realism in the specific national contexts, the one thing in common is that each case was a response to the local conditions, a process of working through the challenge of inscribing a staunch theory into the daily reality of an unfamiliar country, language and culture."... "This collection on the export of Socialist Realism into Central and Eastern Europe after WWII is the first work on the subject which offers an in-depth analysis of the particularities of distinct national and cultural contexts and explores complexities of the cultural Sovietisation of the region"...