Admission: Free with registration and open to the public
A seamless epic... Fresh and surprising...Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said that the poem that praises beauty must swallow all of death, and Stone Upon Stone does just that: illuminating the balance of beauty and brutality that defines our existence.... When Szymek says, 'The whole world is one big language,' we believe it. We cup our ears to listen.... That Stone Upon Stone reads like the grand novel it is, not a novel in translation, is a testament to Johnston's work and Mysliwski's singular vision. - Orion Winner of the 2012 PEN Translation Prize and Best Translated Book Award Join us at the Mid-Manhattan Library (NYPL) for the 2012 Polish session of the European Book Club, where we will discuss the one of the great rural epics of twentieth-century world literature, Wieslaw Mysliwski's Stone Upon Stone, in an award-winning translation by Bill Johnston. In the earthy voice of Mysliwski's narrator, Szymek Pietruszka, we take in a river of consciousness permeated by Polish folk ethos, irony, and country humor, punctuated by history, war, the forces of modernization, and a string of personal adventures. The events of the Twentieth Century we can read about in history books, but the struggle between the lyric and the prosaic in Szymek's narrative offers a sense of what that history feels like from the inside. The European Book Club is a monthly series of book discussions organized by ten European cultural institutes and consulates based in New York. There are no special membership requirements to participate. Simply check the European Book Club website for upcoming meetings as they are announced, register, read the book, and join the discussion! The discussion of Mysliwski's Stone Upon Stone will be moderated by David A. Goldfarb, Curator of Literature and Humanities at the Polish Cultural Institute New York. The Polish session of the European Book Club is organized by the Polish Cultural Institute New York in collaboration with the Mid-Manhattan Library of the New York Public Library, within the framework of the European Cultural Institutes in New York (EUNIC). More about Stone Upon Stone Reserve the book from the NYPL Catalogue Purchase the book from the publisher's website
