On the Road to Babadag

Novel

Original Polish title: Jadąc do Babadag, published in 2004 by Czarne

Rights sold to:

USA (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Spanish world rights (Quaderns Crema/El Acantilado), Chinese simplex rights (Guangdong Flower City Publishing House), Sweden (Ersatz), Slovakia (Absynt), Turkey (Livera)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: UK (Harvill Secker), Russia (NLO), France (Christian Bourgois), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (De Geus), Finland (Like), Hungary (Magvetö), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Dereta), Slovenia (Beletrina), Albania (Mesonjetorja)

Literary

Andrzej Stasiuk

On the Road to Babadag / Unterwegs nach Babadag

Novel

Original Polish title: Jadąc do Babadag, published in 2004 by Czarne

Herds of cows on a stretch of rail tracks beyond Oradea, sheep on a suburban street in Satu Mare, a white horse grazing in the middle of Suceava – the dirtiest, remotest, most god-forsaken part of our continent is inhabited by animals. In the endlessness of rusting warehouses, in the shadow of vast chimneys and between swaying trucks, they pluck at poisoned grass without a hint of worry or interest. As if they had been grazing there since time immemorial.

Andrzej Stasiuk’s literary...

Andrzej Stasiuk’s literary reports from Albania, Moldavia, Rumania, Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia are peppered with sequences that could have come from a Buñuel or Fellini film. When he returns he can hardly believe that he has really been there, that he did not simply dream it all – the bunkers, the satellite dishes and UNO flags, the grass-covered steps, the villages in the Danube delta slowly sinking into the water, the little town where the children are born tired.

Babadag is the name of one of the towns he travels through between the Baltic coast and the Black Sea. One of those »weak regions« that disappear as soon as you turn your back on them. A panicky feeling that, along with their inhabitants, they could cease to exist if he did not describe them spurns him on. And Stasiuk’s new, maybe his most beautiful book about a world beyond the Dukla pass is the product of a lover’s fear, the fear of loss.

»Stasiuk writes beautiful sentences, pure and simple. And he writes in a breathless, stream-of-consciousness style that channels Jack Kerouac, from whose classic work the book’s title echoes […] This is not a typical sprightly travelogue, filled with charming villages and interesting strangers met on trains. It’s an impressionistic journey through the bleakness of post-Communist Eastern Europe: dark, chaotic, corrupt, yet defiantly resilient. […] On the road to Babadag is, at times, angry, funny, charming and depressing. If there is beauty in bleakness, Stasiuk has found it.« Jim Anderson, Star Tribune

»On the road to Babadag has great humor and a wonderful loopiness. Stasiuk shows what life is like when the stakes are so low the rest of the world regularly overlooks you.« Jessa Crispin, National Public Radio

»A eulogy for the old Europe, the Europe both in and out of time, the Europe now lost in the folds of the map […]« James Hopkin, The Guardian

2005, 299 pages

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Literary

Andrzej Stasiuk

Author

Andrzej Stasiuk, born in Warsaw in 1960, has been living in the Beskides since 1986. He writes poems, stories, novels, also works as a journalist and scriptwriter and together with his wife Monika Sznajderman directs the publishing house Czarne located in Wolowiec. He has received numerous literary awards, among them the Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize for Literature (2002), the Nike Prize (Poland, 2005) for Jadąc do Babadag, the Adalbert Stifter Prize (2005), the Vilenica Prize and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2016).

Andrzej Stasiuk

Author

Andrzej Stasiuk, born in Warsaw in 1960, has been living in the Beskides since 1986. He writes poems, stories, novels, also works as a...

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Dalkey Archive), France (Christian Bourgois), Romania (RAO), Ukraine (Grani-T)

Year of Publication: 2004

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Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Serbia (Heliks), Ukraine (Old Lion)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Christian Bourgois), Netherlands (De Geus), Slovakia (Slovart), Bulgaria (Paradox), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Zalozba), India (Hindi; Rajkamal Prakashan)

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Korea (Saemulgyul), Czech Republic (Prostor), Romania (Paralela)

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (NLO), France (Christian Bourgois), Italy (Bompiani), Sweden (print rights; Norstedts), Sweden (digital rights; Ersatz), Norway (Aschehoug), Slovakia (Baum), Hungary (Magvetö)

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Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (print edition Mimesis / digital edition GoWare), Hungary (Kijarat), Bulgaria (Lektura), Romania (Polirom)

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Azbooka), France (Christian Bourgois), Netherlands (De Geus), Sweden (print rights: Norstedts; digital rights: Ersatz), Slovenia (Beletrina), Hungary (Magvetö), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (RAO), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Booka)