She writes early in the book that the task of being a novelist is “arduous.” It is “undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself,” she confesses. Like D’Rivera, Tokarczuk chooses to take a similar rebellious trail. “First I will play the Mozart, then I will destroy him,” D’Rivera declared, playing a few precise phrases from Mozart’s concerto before departing from the rigor of the score and taking us on a wild, cacophonic journey. The book reminded me of a Paquito D’Rivera concert I attended years ago wherein the virtuosic jazz saxophonist announced from a Boston stage he would be performing a selection from Mozart that he was forced to learn as a music student in his native Havana, Cuba. The novel is composed of 116 vignettes, fictional forays juxtaposed among non-fictional, or essayist pieces, stitched together by using the voice of a female narrator (Tokarczuk herself). She has been rewarded for her daring efforts: this past spring she became the first Polish author to win the U.K.’s prestigious Man Booker International Prize for 2018. Her book is a series of puzzle pieces that strangely - almost magically - conjoin. The result is that she lands nimbly on her feet.

Instead, she catapults into the air in order to produce a book about travel and the human condition - a risky flight of fancy. She not about staying on the ground, crafting a novel that develops characters and plot in the traditional sense. 25 - is a writer who is not afraid of hurling herself into high elevations. Olga Tokarczuk - who reads from her novel Flights in Boston on Sept. Author Olga Tokarczuk - the more far-fetched, bizarre, and absurd something may be, the more she is drawn in.

Flights by olga tokarczuk summary