The Beskid Chronicles
Original Polish title: Kroniki beskidzkie i światowe, published in 2018 by Czarne
The Beskid Chronicles / Beskiden-Chronik
Original Polish title: Kroniki beskidzkie i światowe, published in 2018 by Czarne
From his home in the Beskid Mountains, Andrzej Stasiuk comments upon the state of Poland, the world, and the minutiae of daily life
Andrzej Stasiuk is an author who often seeks out the great yonder in his writing. In The Beskid Chronicles, though, he turns his inimitable eye to his homeland of Poland, a country undergoing rapid and often subtle transformations. The book gathers together feature articles and poetic miniatures written by Stasiuk between 2013 and 2018 for the Polish weekly paper Tygodnik Powszechny. From his village in the Beskid Mountains on the Slovakian border. He surveys the present,...
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Andrzej Stasiuk is an author who often seeks out the great yonder in his writing. In The Beskid Chronicles, though, he turns his inimitable eye to his homeland of Poland, a country undergoing rapid and often subtle transformations. The book gathers together feature articles and poetic miniatures written by Stasiuk between 2013 and 2018 for the Polish weekly paper Tygodnik Powszechny. From his village in the Beskid Mountains on the Slovakian border. He surveys the present, commenting upon both Polish and global affairs, the big tendencies inthe world of politics and the minor matters of daily life.
And sometimes, Stasiuk throws aside his editorial assignment and heads off on a journey, to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, or writes a reflection on nature, on sheep, the wind. The texts that make up The Beskid Chronicles shine a provocative, often ironic spotlight on the topics they investigate. In these unpretentious pieces of prose, Stasiuk reveals himself to be a piercing observer of the present.
And sometimes, Stasiuk throws aside his editorial assignment and heads off on a journey, to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, or writes a reflection on nature, on sheep, the wind. The texts that make up The Beskid Chronicles shine a provocative, often ironic spotlight on the topics they investigate. In these unpretentious pieces of prose, Stasiuk reveals himself to be a piercing observer of the present.
»What distinguishes Stasiuk’s texts – alongside their poetry and ironic precision – is the way things are so intensely experienced and reflected upon«, Norma Schneider, neues deutschland
»Here, Stasiuk speaks as a feuilletonist (the term used in Poland for columnists in general). … So can Stasiuk cut it as a feuilletonist? He sure can.« Gerhard Gnauck, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Stasiuk masters everything, history and its dead, nature, the magic of being on the road. … He doesn’t do metaphysics, instead, he enchants the moment.« Christoph Schröder, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»[Stasiuk’s descriptions of landscapes] are imbued with a great poetic force: the levity and audacity of an erstwhile dissident coupled with a melancholic love of the land.« Norbert Mappes-Niediek, Frankfurter Rundschau
»Here, Stasiuk speaks as a feuilletonist (the term used in Poland for columnists in general). … So can Stasiuk cut it as a feuilletonist? He sure can.« Gerhard Gnauck, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Stasiuk masters everything, history and its dead, nature, the magic of being on the road. … He doesn’t do metaphysics, instead, he enchants the moment.« Christoph Schröder, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»[Stasiuk’s descriptions of landscapes] are imbued with a great poetic force: the levity and audacity of an erstwhile dissident coupled with a melancholic love of the land.« Norbert Mappes-Niediek, Frankfurter Rundschau
»What distinguishes Stasiuk’s texts – alongside their poetry and ironic precision – is the way things are so intensely experienced and reflected upon«, Norma Schneider, neues deutschland
»Here, Stasiuk speaks as a feuilletonist (the term used in Poland for columnists in general). … So can Stasiuk cut it as a feuilletonist? He sure can.« Gerhard Gnauck, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Stasiuk masters everything, history and its dead, nature, the...
»Here, Stasiuk speaks as a feuilletonist (the term used in Poland for columnists in general). … So can Stasiuk cut it as a feuilletonist? He sure can.« Gerhard Gnauck, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Stasiuk masters everything, history and its dead, nature, the...
Read more
2018, 303 pages
Persons
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...
© Cai Caslavinieri
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2021
Crossing
It’s June of 1941, a few days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In a village along the Bug River, German soldiers have taken up quarters, while Polish partisans are hiding out...
Rights sold to:
Spain (Acantilado), France (Actes Sud), Sweden (Ersatz), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Založba)
Year of Publication: 2018
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2018
A Short Book about Dying
Andrzej Stasiuk, famous for the artfulness with which he describes deteriorating places and disappearing landscapes, tells four stories about death and departure. There is Augustyn, his writer...
Rights sold to:
Spain (Acantilado), France (Actes Sud), Italy (Atmosphere Libri), Hungary (Magveto),
Year of Publication: 2017
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2017
The East
The sum of his travels and writings – recorded in one epic stream and told through captivating episodes and epiphanies. Stasiuk heads east from Poland, traversing Russia and heading into China in...
Rights sold to:
France (Actes Sud), Sweden (Ersatz), Czech Republic (Kniha Zlin, s. r. o), Slovakia (Slovart), Croatia (Fraktura), Ukraine (Old Lion),
Year of Publication: 2016
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2016
Across the River
This collection of twelve interrelated stories by Andrzej Stasiuk begins with three beautiful sketches from his childhood. The scenes are of modest processions, not particularly festive, but full of reverent wonder: walking to church, to the library, to religion class. First explorations of the magical and the erotic in an untouched sphere full of secrets, in which the allures of love can be...
Year of Publication: 2016
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2016
Taksim
Władek and Pawel are rattling around the markets and bazaars of southern Europe in their old, clapped-out delivery van. But their second-hand clothes from “Paris-London-New York” are no...
Rights sold to:
Spain (Acantilado), Catalan rights (Comanegra), France (Actes Sud), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Aschehoug), Slovakia (Slovart), Hungary (Magveto), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Studentska Zalozba Beletrina)
Year of Publication: 2016
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2016
The White Raven
Five old school friends in post-communist Warsaw. Now all fathers in their early thirties, they head off into the unknown. Sick of their everyday lives, they let the melancholic and charismatic Wasyl...
Rights sold to:
UK (Serpent’s Tail), Russia (Azbooka), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (De Geus), Finland (Taifuuni), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Paradox), Serbia (Clio)
Year of Publication: 2015
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2015
There Are No Expressways on Golden Roads
Nobody is more at home on the road than the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk. The fifty prose vignettes gathered in this collection narrate journeys through sparsely populated regions on the Polish-Ukrainian border, the steppes of Siberia, and the vast, open spaces of China and Mongolia.
A declaration of love for untrodden paths and neglected regions, wandering through memories and dreams...
A declaration of love for untrodden paths and neglected regions, wandering through memories and dreams...
Year of Publication: 2013
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2013
Post-Scriptum Diary
Andrzej Stasiuk has never written about Poland and the West with the same wrath as he does here, in the wake of his most recent travels through the Balkans. Having returned from countries with “real personalities”, where minarets loom over minefields and burial grounds, Stasiuk bristles about some of the contradictions in his home country: dreaming of martyrdom but then choosing...
Year of Publication: 2009
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2009
Winter
»You’re not going to end up on the junkheap«, says Grzesiek to his orange Syrena sedan as he drives along the Polish-Slovakian border with a bootful of copper wiring. »I’ll find someone for you. Maybe a pensioner. He’ll look after you, and the two of you can grow old together.«
Like in Stasiuk’s famous Galician Stories,...
Like in Stasiuk’s famous Galician Stories,...
Year of Publication: 2008
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2008
Dojczland
The narrator, a literary guest worker doing a punishing tour of readings in Germany, makes no secret of the fact that he'd have been happier to find the train drawing into Bucharest Gara de Nord...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Christian Bourgois), Romania (RAO)
Year of Publication: 2008
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2008
Fado
In this delightful collection of essays – by turns wry and reflective, wistful and witty – contemporary Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk turns his attention to the villages and small towns of Romania,...
Rights sold to:
Slovenia (Cankarjeva založba)
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: 2005
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2005
On the Road to Babadag
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...
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)
Year of Publication: 2004
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2004
Cardboard Airplane
Impressions from Central Europe, a metaphor of the ›variety of worlds‹: a medial cosmos here, the disposability of each and every possible information, a fallen into decay sanatorium there, a ›Galician Magic Mountain‹.
Andrzej Stasiuk's essays and autobiographic album is not only a mirrot of authors – such as his preferred ones: Beckett, Hrbal and Platonow –, books...
Year of Publication: 2003
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2003
The Walls of Hebron
Stasiuk's legendary debut, and new editions have been repeatedly brought out in 1992 in Poland, continues to irritate and fascinated readers. To describe the violent reality of everyday prison life the author summed up all his powers of poetic exaggeration such as was to also be the hallmark of his later writings.
In this work, Stasiuk looks at the world with an unflinching and...
Year of Publication: 2002
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2002
Galician Tales
If you enjoyed Dukla you'll be equally enthusiastic about Galician Tales. Because Stasiuk's literary landscape, south-east Poland, the forgotten province in the years following...
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)
Year of Publication: 2001
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2001
How I Became a Writer
There are few examples where adolescent rebellion, not only under communism, has been described more pointedly or more scathingly. Being drafted into the army signals the end for Stasiuk of nights on...
Rights sold to:
France (Actes Sud), Ukraine (Discursus)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Korea (Saemulgyul), Czech Republic (Prostor), Hungary (Poket), Romania (Paralela)
Year of Publication: 2000
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2000
Dukla
»At several points in the haunting Dukla, Andrzej Stasiuk claims that what he is trying to do is »write a book about light.« The result is a beautiful, lyrical series of evocations of a very...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Dalkey Archive), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Slovenia (Beletrina), Turkey (Livera), Azerbaijan (Alatoran)
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)
Year of Publication: 2000
Juri Andruchowytsch, Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2000
My Europe
In these »two essays on the strangest part of the world«, Yuri Andrukhovych and Andrzej Stasiuk offer a stereoscopic portrait of Central Europe. On foot and by car, they travelled together between...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (print edition Mimesis / digital edition GoWare), Hungary (Kijarat), Bulgaria (Lektura), Romania (Polirom)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Periplum), Croatia (Fraktura)
Year of Publication: 1999
Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 1999
Nine
Nine is a brilliant novel from one of Europe's finest writers. It tells of a post-communist generation of young Poles among whom the strictures of the old collide daily with the freedom of...
Rights sold to:
USA (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), UK (Harvill Secker), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Italy (Giunti), Amharic (Hohe)
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)