A Treatise on Shelling Beans

Praise

Longlisted for ALTA 2014 National Translation Award

Praise for PEN Translation Prize-winning Stone Upon Stone:

“Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness … Richly textured and wonderfully evocative … Undeniably original.” —Publishers Weekly, starred

“A marvel of narrative seduction, a rare double masterpiece of storytelling and translation … Mysliwski’s prose, replete with wit and an almost casual intensity, skips nimbly from one emotional register to the next, carrying dramatic force.” ––Times Literary Supplement

“Sweeping . . . irreverent . . With winning candor . . . Pietruszka chronicles the modernization of rural Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire.” ––The New Yorker

“Inspired by a surprise visitor, the elderly caretaker at a summer resort spills the beans on his entire life, from a childhood shattered by war to lost loves to his failed efforts to play the saxophone, told in relentless, pellucid detail that might puzzle thrill seekers but reads like life itself.” — Library Journal (Best Fiction in Translation 2013)

“Newcomers to Mysliwski should prepare themselves for a unique voice, intriguing characters and page after page of wily but thoughtful prose … Our loquacious host is both riveting and endearing company … Our garrulous narrator with his messy life is equally hard to resist. The best approach is simply to succumb to his extraordinary storytelling.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Feeling at times like a confession, this is another masterstroke by the acclaimed Polish author Wiesław Myśliwski … his remarkable translator, Bill Johnston, matches him step for step.” —Quarterly Conversation

“Should novels of the soil and its fruits ever enjoy a broad resurgence of popular interest, the Polish novelist Wiesław Myśliwski should stand as a prime beneficiary. . . . A closeness to the earth, to its remorseless rhythms and demands, to the hard, absurdity-ridden peasant life these demands and these rhythms engender, suffuses his books.” — Los Angeles Review of Books