A Treatise On Shelling Beans

(Paperback)

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Wieslaw Mysliwski returns with another brilliant translation by Bill Johnston. From its opening invitation for the reader to 'please, come on in', the direct address from the narrator draws the reader into a conversational style that is highly amusing, perceptive and human. And in this unforgettable voice the narrator meditates upon the role of fate and chance in human lives, reflecting on how far the traumatic events of his childhood and of Poland's history has shaped his person.

Reviews

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 Wiesaw Myliwski ... 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 Wiesaw Myliwski 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

Author Bio

Wieslaw Mysliwski (pron- VEE-slaw Mish-LIF-ski) is the only writer to have twice received the Nike Prize, Poland's most prestigious literary award- in 1997 for his novel Horizon and again in 2007 for A Treatise on Shelling Beans. He worked as an editor at the People's Publishing Cooperative and at the magazines Regiony and Sycyna. In addition to the Nike Prize, Mysliwski has received the Stanislaw Pietak Prize, the Arts Ministry Prize, the State Prize, the Reymont Prize, and the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award. The author lives in Poland.