3.5
Flights
ByPublisher Description
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." — Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." — Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." — Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." — Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
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3.5
“reallyy loving olga tokarczuk atm although this one hit a bit less for me ... overall i still loved it but there were some parts that really dragged and usually she can write about literally ANYTHING and i find it so fascinating and magical. i really loved all the taxidermy/anatomy stuff in this especially but my favourite part was right at the VERY end when the old professor is dying and his memories are recalled back as these still images and moments that are slowly flooding with blood. very unusually serene and beautiful imagery. i cannot get enough of this womans writing honestly there is nothing else quite like it shes just SO GOOD”
“A genre-defying book that never settles over a stretch of specificity; rather, it’s a melting pot of brilliant ideas, musings, essays, philosophies, astute observations, and short stories. It doesn’t concern itself with a specific point or direction; it meanders in very distinct corners while arriving at the themes of movement and motion, the human body and its parts, and the fabric of space and time—all done masterfully while never losing sight of describing the human condition.
I was excited for this one because I loved ‘House of Day, House of Night’ by the same author, which has the exact unique structure and its constellation of loosely related stories and musings. So I had high expectations going into this book and I was flabbergasted. It’s spell-binding and staggering with profundity that I took some moments to breathe and stare at a wall to process such precious words and thoughts.
Have I fully unlocked the overarching mysteries and how everything ties with each other? Not on a first read, no. But I already have seen enough to know that this book is colossal in its literary pursuits while laced with breathtaking prose and writing to produce a piece of literature meant to make a semblance of an imprint on the reader’s life that is likely to stay and stand the test of time (at least it did for me).
Suffice it to say, it changed how I perceive the world, it gave me an ounce of courage to move forward, and enlivened my dying soul. My number one read this year so far.”
“I’ve honestly never read anything like Flights.
It doesn’t feel like a novel in the usual sense. There’s no single story to follow, no clear thread tying everything together. Instead, it’s made up of fragments: observations, mini-stories, reflections. And surprisingly, that’s exactly what makes it work. At some point, I stopped trying to connect everything and just let myself sit in it. And that’s when it clicked.
What I loved most was how it kept returning to two things: travel and the human body. Movement, disappearance, people constantly in transit. And then these almost obsessive reflections on organs, preservation, and mortality. Somewhere along the way, it made me think about how we’re alive because we move, but also how fragile that is. Our bodies will eventually fail, and yet there’s this human urge to preserve, to hold on, to not disappear - whether through memory, art, or even something as strange as preserving the body itself.
There are also certain stories that really stayed with me. The man whose wife and child suddenly disappear. The woman who just leaves her life behind and rides trains endlessly. They’re unsettling in a way that’s hard to explain, but I think it’s because they tap into something very real - this tension between wanting to stay and wanting to vanish.
What surprised me the most is how expansive the whole experience felt. It’s a book about movement, but it actually made me slow down. It made me notice things more - my surroundings, my body, even just the fact that I’m here, alive, moving.
This book changed how I think about what a novel can be, and that alone makes it special.”
About Olga Tokarczuk
Olga Tokarczuk has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Man Book International Prize, among many other honors. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, two collections of essays, and a children’s book; her work has been translated into fifty languages.
Other books by Olga Tokarczuk
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