Stone Upon Stone

Praise

Winner of 2012 PEN Translation Prize 

Winner of Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award 2012 


“This is an epic novel about modernization in rural Poland.” — Publisher’s Weekly, 20 Best Books in Translation You’ve Never Read

Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness, Mysliwski masterfully renders in Johnston’s gorgeous translation (Mysliwski’s first into English) life in a Polish farming village before and after WWII. . . . Richly textured and wonderfully evocative. — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish. — Kirkus, starred review

Wieslaw Mysliwski’s vast novel is an artistic accomplishment of the highest order… A masterpiece beyond the shadow of a doubt. — Henryk Bereza

A hymn in praise of life. — Krysytna Dabrowska

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. . . . He manages tone so finely, orchestrating a perfect continuity between the tragic and the comic and, ultimately, between life and death . . . In his translation Bill Johnston navigates Mysliwski’s modulations with skill and the lightness of touch that is generally the face of profound labor. — Times Literary Supplement

A marvelous, garrulous book … The grandest example of a genre …  Szymek’s rustic voice narrates with a naivete and an eloquence that are equally endearing, reaching into every corner of the Polish countryside like a great shining sun. — The National

Sweeping . . . irreverent . . With winning candor . . . chronicles the modernization of rural Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire. — The New Yorker

 ”[Myśliwski] belongs in the first rank of modern Eastern European novelists. . . . The prose … is vividly concrete, blazing with precise physical details, and brusque (though never the less acute) even when it comes to thorny philosophical questions.” — Los Angeles Review of Books