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A review by kingarooski
Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski
5.0
Because these days anyone who goes around on their own two feet is nothing but an obstacle to the cars, on the road and everywhere else. Even when you're walking at the side of the road you feel as if all the cars are driving through you.
A book positioned at a time of great change in Europe in which society changed from an agarian-based economy with the land farmed through pretty medieval methods, into an industrial and tech-based one. Szymek Pietruszka, our narrator, thinks about his life and retells a number of stories through an (almost) a stream of consciusness. Plot? There really isn't a lot there to talk about: he is born, he has four brothers, he looks after his disabled brother, he spends time in a hospital, he goes to dances, he serves in the resistance but none of these are retold in any chronological way. Szymek jumps from story to story, interjecting into his rememberings long monologues and philosophical musings. And yet this book works. We are pulled into the mind of this narrator, seeing the world through his eyes, watching his country and his way of life change.
...it's only thanks to our weakness that we're connected to other people, that we recognise ourselves in other people, and they recognise themselves in us. And that's how our human fate is shared. It has room for everyone. In it our humanity is fulfilled. Because we don't exist outside our fate. We belong to human fate through weakness, not strength.
A book positioned at a time of great change in Europe in which society changed from an agarian-based economy with the land farmed through pretty medieval methods, into an industrial and tech-based one. Szymek Pietruszka, our narrator, thinks about his life and retells a number of stories through an (almost) a stream of consciusness. Plot? There really isn't a lot there to talk about: he is born, he has four brothers, he looks after his disabled brother, he spends time in a hospital, he goes to dances, he serves in the resistance but none of these are retold in any chronological way. Szymek jumps from story to story, interjecting into his rememberings long monologues and philosophical musings. And yet this book works. We are pulled into the mind of this narrator, seeing the world through his eyes, watching his country and his way of life change.
...it's only thanks to our weakness that we're connected to other people, that we recognise ourselves in other people, and they recognise themselves in us. And that's how our human fate is shared. It has room for everyone. In it our humanity is fulfilled. Because we don't exist outside our fate. We belong to human fate through weakness, not strength.