A Childâs-Eye View, Both Haunted and Quotidian
From âThe Lost Soulâ
By Hillary Chute
THE LOST SOUL (Seven Stories, $22.95)
, an experimental fable illustrated by Joanna Concejo and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, resonates with our current moment. In its carefully executed pages, a man who âslept, ate, worked, drove a car and even played tennisâ wakes up in a hotel room forgetting his purpose, location and name. He guesses Andrew or Matthew before checking his passport: Itâs John. He consults âa wise old doctor,â who repeats a phrase that appears, unanchored, in the bookâs otherwise wordless prologue, next to a drawing of a postage stamp: âIf someone could look down on us from above, theyâd see that the world is full of people running about in a hurry, sweating and very tired, and their lost souls.â
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk s art book The Lost Soul to hit bookstores this week
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Last Updated: Feb 22, 2021, 06:00 PM IST
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It is Tokarczuk s experiment with form and the first time her words have been merged with illustrations by someone else to produce a picture book.
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Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk to be translated into English is a departure for the celebrated Polish author. The Lost Soul , which comes out this week in the U.S., is a poetic story of a man who loses his soul in the daily rush and can only regain it in a very special way. The book has many meanings, also inspired by its nostalgic, meditative drawings by Polish artist Joanna Concejo.