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We were delighted to read stellar reviews of our most recently published book, Mariusz Szczygieł’s Not There (tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Not There is a beautiful collection of reportage exploring loss of all kinds, from grief to absence of small things. Szczygieł’s essays follow a Czech poet, a Ukrainian soldier, a Polish accountant, an Albanian poet, an Israeli writer and travels with his father, as each consider their losses and their gains. Here is a small selection of Szczygieł’s reviews: “Not There ultimately celebrates what endures: the stubborn glow of memory, the joy of small human continuities. In Szczygieł’s world, absence has its own heartbeat, one that reminds us that to write about what has disappeared is to affirm what is still present – the fragile, flickering persistence of being." Frank Wynne, Irish Times “Not There, translated once again by Lloyd-Jones, is full of variety and bounce. We get stories of a woman hunting in a library for books from her childhood, saving one of them just in time from the library’s ruthless ‘clearance’ procedures: ‘You see, my dear,’ the librarian coos at the rescued novel, ‘You’ve escaped selection, you’re going to go on living.’ […] Szczygieł takes pains to preserve tiny things for us: a snatch of dialogue overheard on the metro, or a conversation with a completely random stranger about the Czech national character. […] Czech history – which still seems to obsess Szczygieł – is told through the prism of a single poem, or the history of a Prague house, the Loos-designed Villa Müller – ‘a star among villas’ – through whose exquisite Modernist rooms and stairways history seems to rampage. ‘We never remember the whole, just details,’ he explains. ‘I’m sure the detail is where the whole of something is reflected.’. [...] ‘So, here in this book,’ writes Szczygieł jauntily, ‘we’ve saved one postcard, perhaps more than just that.’ One can only agree with him: whole multitudes are saved in Not There from the ‘bomb of time’.” Robin Ashenden, The Spectator Not There can be purchased on our website, or in any good bookshop.
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