Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2018, and fully deserved, I would say. Tokarczuk's writing is exceptional: it is part 'reverie', part history, part travel diary, part short story-telling, part philosophic musings, part poetic prose, and all that that written with a beautiful pen full of lyrical joy and an attitude to life and people that remains positive throughout.
There is almost no page where you don't stop and pause because of a new insight, an interesting perspective to look at things, the beauty of a phrase, the originality of a thought.
The narrator is travelling around the world: in planes, trains, airports and hotels. She meets people, she observes, reflects, interacts, fantasises. At the same time, "Flights" is also a history of the preservation of the human body, literally, with a special attention to plastination. She tells some true and longer stories about the Filip Verheyen, the Flemish 18th century anatomist, who wrote "letters to his amputated leg", about the letters by Josephine Soliman to the Austrian Emperor Francis II to let her bury her father, an African loyal and personal servant of the emperor, whose body was stuffed after his death and put on display in the emperor's curiousity cabinet, a story about the heart of Chopin that was secretly smuggled back into Poland after his death in Paris.
In essence, the book is about life and death, and flights are just the transition moment, when you are traveling from A to B, with body preservation as a futile attempt to avoid arrival, to prolong the flight artificially.
Some of her stories are cut into chapters that form the backbone of the book, but they are sprinkled with little memories and minute stories and thoughts, often not longer than a paragraph.
One example:
"RUTH
After his wife died, he made a list of all the places that had the same name as her: Ruth. He found quite a few of them, not only towns, but also streams, little settlements, hills - even an island. He said he was doing it for her sake, and besides, it gave him strength to see that in some indefinable way she still existed in the world, even if only in name. And that furthermore, whenever he would stand at the foot of a hill called Ruth, he would get the sense that she hadn't died at all, that she was right there, just differently. Her life insurance was able to cover the costs of his travels".
... and one more:
"IRKUTSK- MOSCOW
Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8 am and lands in Moscow at the same time - at eight o'clock in the morning on that same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself. So there should be time enough for confessions of whole lifetimes. Time elapses inside the plane but doesn't trickle out of it".
Who wouldn't like to read this again, and again?
Tocarczuk's writing defies all conventions of structure, plot, narrative. Her style is as precious as it is meticulous, carefully crafted, concise, sharp and impactful. And her tone of voice is so full of wonder, optimism and positive thinking, without even a trace of sarcasm. And it is masterly composed, like a symphony of musings.
"Flights" is deep, insightful, gripping, funny, horryfying, philosophical, poetic.
A real treat. A real delight.
Mandatory reading.
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