Bieguni - book review

Conspiracy theorists claim Nobel prizes are awarded to influence political choices. No matter how much truth those assertions contain, the recent Nobel prize in literature granted to the Polish writer, Olga Tokarczuk, has not been a gift to the ruling party four days ahead of the parliamentary election.

The most prestigious honour a writer can receive has sparked off interest in Mrs Tokarczuk’s books. Shelves in bookshops ran empty, publishing houses rushed to place orders to printing companies, e-queues in libraries got longer. This spurt has of course affected just part of the better educated part of the nation.

Before I set out to it (I had planned to wait out the period of the biggest demand), I received the best known book of the accoladed writer, Bieguni, as one of my birthday gifts.

It was one of 3 books I read during the nine-day-long Christmas break (three days off, nine days away from the office). I had envisaged a tough read, rather slow and requiring concentration to grasp, as Noble prize winners are not hailed as producers of literature for masses. Unexpectedly, the book with its natural flow and lightness was easy to follow, yet involved some mindfulness and ability of reading between the lines. Maybe for such reason minister Glinski could not make it to back cover of any of Mrs Tokarczuk’s books despite trying (not) hard (enough).

The book has no unified plot, yet it is a jumble of several threads (in such respect akin to a blog devoid of posting dates), drifting around a leitmotiv of travel. Characters and sub-plots are sets in different epochs and venues, come from different walks of life, some refer to actual events, some are purely fictional. The only element that brings them together is involvement in some sort of motion. The very title might be somewhat misleading, since the tribe of Bieguni does not appear even once on the pages of the book, yet their belief that motion can ward off evil serves as inspiration for the entire work.

The writer contrasts herself (she travelled as lot and visited places on several continents during her life) with her parents (who holidayed once a year, planned their journeys carefully and found them stressful). I find such contrast in people around. There are ones who cannot stay in one place for a long period, if they tried, they would suffocate (travelling is a sense of their life) and there are others who prefer to stay in one place and just visit occasionally some holiday or business destinations.

I belong the to the latter group. The settled lifestyle I have chosen, being attached to the place I feel is home gives me feelings of comfort and security. I do travel from time to time, my trips are longer or shorter, but all taken not to search for something new, but to visit new places and then return home. I could not live today here, tomorrow there, in a month somewhere else, unlike other people could not live chained to one location.

The reflections upon the book reminded me of an article on people who had not ventured beyond Warsaw for the last two decades, published in Gazeta Wyborcza several years ago, today available free of charge. From a perspective of somebody who travels around Poland several times a year and visited 8 countries over the last 3 years, a fascinating read.