Honek

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

In a village in the remote countryside of southern Poland, it’s as if the poverty and brutality emanate like mist from the cursed dirt. The thirteen interconnected stories in White Nights tell of families, scarred by tragedy but also by each other. Whether by digging a pond deep in the woods, taking a lover, raising a family, or simply trying to get ahead of the endless work as the thunder rolls over their home, Urszula Honek’s characters share, with the sincerest care and honesty, a local--yet so clearly universal--story of ruin and hope. Kate Webster’s blazing translation of Urszula’s poetic and earthen prose brings us to places seldom seen in literature, where the people do not ask to be understood, but merely to be heard.