We recommend books for the summer. For those who travel and for those who travel only thanks to novels

Marta Korycka (): After , we head abroad. First to the United States.

Richard Kozik (): I highly recommend the “American Stories” series by Czarne Publishing. “Trilobites. Collected Stories” Breece D’J Pancake are 12 short stories with huge emotional and literary potential. They are set in West Virginia. It is full of coal dust and people who some would probably call losers. However, there is no talk of social exclusion here, because the entire local community is like that. This gloomy land is inhabited by miners working in poor shafts and farmers struggling (or not) to make ends meet. There are also those who do not fit into the patterns – dreamers and madmen. Sometimes someone tries to break out of this vicious circle… Moving stories, unique language of the story (applause also for the translator, Maciej Świerkocki), unique, brutal atmosphere of the whole make it hard to tear yourself away from the book. And it is a great pity that there were no sequels. The author committed suicide in 1979, at the age of 27. I also recommend the collection “Being Human” Nicole Krauss. This time America is suspended between New York and Tel Aviv. There is a lot of loneliness and confusion, but also a lot of passion and everyday – small/big – dramas.

Anna Kowal (): The main character “Abandoned” JD Barker (Black Sheep) is horror author Thad McAlister, who is finishing work on a new book. In it, he describes a witch trial in the late 17th century. He has great hopes for the publication of the novel and a contract for its film adaptation. However, it turns out that the book is also important to someone/something else. Very powerful… When Thad sets off to meet with his agent and film producer, his daughter, his heavily pregnant wife and the housekeeper are left at home. None of them suspects how dramatic the circumstances will be when they meet again. Fragments of McAlister’s novel “The Return of the Witch” are intertwined here with the story of how a powerful force creeps into his life and that of his family. Will the followers of the witch imprisoned “forever” years ago be able to free her? Will literary fiction turn out to be a terrifying reality? Will the writer be able to save himself and his family?

Richard: “Liberation Day” George Saunders (Znak) is a must-read for short story lovers. Here we are dealing with a strong unreality of American reality. Yes, there are many elements of it, for example in the story “Mother’s Day”, in which the heroine walks (not entirely voluntarily) with her daughter through the streets of her town, but in most of the stories we can rather speak of science fiction visions. The basic question, recurring in Saunders’ stories, concerns the human condition, and it is rather impossible to accuse the author of excessive optimism. He sets his characters before big challenges, often far beyond their strength, and constantly tests them. Fortunately, he does it with great charm and a sense of humor (specific, in fact). For example, I love his short character descriptions like: “They both limped. Each on a different leg. When they walked down the street, they looked, damn, like a dance party.”

Anna: “One Last Favor” Dennis Lehane (Rebis) tells the story of what a man is capable of when everything is taken away from him. In 1974, a verdict is passed in Boston that is to lead to the desegregation of schools. Youth from white neighborhoods were to be transported to schools in black neighborhoods and vice versa. This causes outrage and protests in defense of the “lifestyle” in Southie, the Irish part of Boston. Mary Pat Fennessy also takes part in the preparations for them. The atmosphere thickens when a black teenager dies at a subway station in Southie. Witnesses saw a group of white youth chasing him. It was supposed to include Mary Pat’s daughter, 17-year-old Jules. The girl goes missing and her mother sets off to search for her… It is a very bitter story, because the mother knows that she will not find her daughter alive. He also showed Lehanne movingly how deeply racism was rooted in the American mentality and “lifestyle” 50 years ago. And that from this perspective, half a century is definitely not that long ago…

Richard: “The moon has set. In an uncertain fight” is another volume of John Steinbeck’s works, published by Prószyński i S-ka. Together with the characters, we visit California and Europe. The action of the novella “The Moon Has Set” takes place during World War II in a seaside town in northern Europe. An unexpected landing of a paratrooper battalion leads to the occupation of the port by the enemy. In order to maintain peace, the occupiers decide to take a “humanitarian” option – instead of changing the people in power, they completely subordinate them. However, the residents do not intend to give up easily… Jim Nolan, the hero of the novel “In Uncertain Combat”, is one of the organizers of a strike of itinerant seasonal workers in Californian orchards. The revolt, which was supposed to include fruit and cotton pickers, turns into a brutal conflict between the exploiters and the exploited. The situation slowly gets out of control…

Marta: I also spent part of my vacation reading in the USA – just two days, because “The Bone Collector” Jeffery Deaver is a quick read. Not because it’s an easy book, but because it’s incredibly absorbing. Prószyński Media has reissued not only the first part of the crime novels with Lincoln Rhyme as an investigator this year. “The Bone Collector” is over a quarter of a century old (it was published in 1997), you may remember the film adaptation with Denzel Washington as a paralyzed former policeman. I read at times while taking a breath, with such anxiety that I forgot to breathe.

We are wandering around Europe

Anna: And since we have already traveled from America to Europe… Reading “Miracle in the Valley of the Poskoks” (Noir sur Blanc) will certainly amuse you. Croatian writer and satirist Ante Tomić gracefully spins a tale of farewell to patriarchy. It is best not to venture into the titular valley. The power plant representatives find out about this when they come to explain a “minor misunderstanding” involving permanent non-payment of electricity bills and fall into the hands of the father and four sons of the Poskoks who live there. Jozo, a traditionalist father, cooks – dishes made from muslin every day, with not always conventional additions. One of the sons took on the laundry. It took him some time to realize, however, that white and colored clothes should not be combined, so they have a lot of pink underwear… The house and its surroundings are getting dirtier and more neglected by the day. A friendly priest advises the Poskoks that one of the young men should get married. The oldest of the brothers, Kreszimir, sets off to Split to search for her. He is looking for a waitress he met during the war fifteen years ago…

Ryszard: There are some school readings that made a big impression on me and stayed with me. The one that I remember the most is the story of a little boy, a yard bully who became a hero. A story without a happy ending, because although he and his friends defended the square – a place to meet and play – he paid the highest price for it. And when he died, I cried. So I waited impatiently, but also with fear. Returning to a child’s reading after several decades can be devastating. What seduced us turns out to be faded and naive. What captivated us – bores us. And yet “The Boys from Paul Street” (Margines) translated by Miłosz Waligórski was a book I read with great pleasure. For a moment I felt like that boy who was so keenly following the fates of his peers.

Anna: We will travel to Sweden with the heroes “Divorce” Moy Herngren (Albatros). For over thirty years, Bea and Niklas have lived a comfortable life in an exclusive district of Stockholm. They have two teenage daughters, he is a pediatrician, she is a housewife. One day, after a seemingly trivial argument, Niklas goes out with a friend to let off steam. When he doesn’t show up for several hours, Bea starts to worry, and various scenarios start to form in her head. However, even in the darkest of them, she didn’t foresee that her marriage was over and her husband wasn’t going to fight for it…

Ryszard: Darko Cvijetić calls his nearly 80-page “Schindler’s Elevator” (Noir sur Blanc) novel and… has every right to do so, because of its “weight” and the amount of emotions written on its pages. The Red Tower in Prijedor – “a hole in the world known for war criminals, camps and painters” – is two connected 13-story skyscrapers. In Cvijetić’s novel, this “vertical village” with four elevators symbolically becomes Yugoslavia. “And the house was full of workers and teachers – on each floor eight apartments: two Serbian, two Muslim-Bosniak, two Yugoslav and two Croatian, all mixed and spiced up with at least two Roma families.” Everyone knew each other well, children played and grew up together, they argued and loved – as is the case in life. But the war came and it turned out that a neighbor can be a mortal enemy, who must be fought, taken prisoner, sent to a camp and killed. And she unleashed the worst (but sometimes the best) in people. The short stories of the residents of the Red Tower are told very sparingly and without exaltation, in simple, accurate words.

Anna: “Broken Mirror” Mercè Rodoredy (Margins) will take you to Spain. The story begins in the 1870s, and reaches back to the dictatorship of Franco and the Spanish Civil War. Salvador Valldaura meets Teresa Goday. Despite their differences, they get married and move to a large villa on the outskirts of Barcelona. It is in this house that their family flourishes and falls apart. Let us learn the fates of the husbands, wives, daughters and sons. There are great tragedies and even greater loves, including forbidden ones. There are betrayals and acts of unconditional devotion. This is the story of the twilight of a matriarchal dynasty built on love, lies, passions and secrets…

Ryszard: Arturo Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite Spanish-language writers, a modern equivalent of Alexandre Dumas. Art Rage is taking over the publishing of his books in Poland, and it starts with “Flemish Chessboard”. A 15th-century painting by a Flemish master is about to be auctioned when Julia, a young art restorer, discovers a strange inscription in the corner: who killed the knight? In the painting, the Duke of Flanders and his knight are playing a game of chess, while a lady stands by the window in the background. Julia is determined to solve the mystery of the 1469 murder at all costs, but when she starts looking for clues, several of her friends from the art world are soon brutally murdered. What connects the game of chess in the painting, the death of Roger d’Arras, the dark side of the art world and these murders? – that’s the summary. I admit that I am tempted to re-read Perez-Reverte’s novel.

Anna: “The Measure of Life” (Sonia Draga), Nikki Erlick’s debut novel is gripping from the very first pages. On a seemingly ordinary day, all people over the age of 22 receive a box with a string described as “the measure of life”. No one knows where the boxes came from, some open them immediately, others wait for the situation to be explained. It turns out that the length of the string in the box shows how long they will live. And then everything descends into total chaos… You could say that we get a vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Support groups for “short-stringers” are formed, some people are forced to open their boxes (those who want to join the army), some are taken away without being able to look inside (in Korea). Many people decide to live their lives to the fullest – they do a lot of dangerous things, from parachute jumps to shootings. In the end, they know whether they will survive a given event or not. Unfortunately, when politics enters the picture, protests occur, and the possession of short strings increasingly affects the lives of their owners. What emerged from this is a surprisingly grim vision of the world… although not the whole world, because from the heroines’ journey to Venice we see that not all countries have been gripped by such madness. And the next journeys of our book recommendations.