Stone upon Stone

"Sweeping...irreverent...With winning candor...Pietruszka chronicles the modernization of rural Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire."-- The New Yorker A masterpiece of postwar Polish literature, Stone Upon Stoneis Wieslaw Mysliwski's grand epic in the rural tradition--a profound and irreverent stream of memory cutting through the rich and varied terrain of one man's connection to the land, to his family and community, to women, to tradition, to God, to death, and to what it means to be alive. Wise and impetuous, plain-spoken and compassionate Szymek Pietruszka recalls his youth in their village, his time as a guerrilla soldier, as a wedding official, barber, policeman, lover, drinker, and caretaker for his invalid brother. Filled with interwoven stories and voices, by turns hilarious and moving, Szymek's narrative exudes the profound wisdom of one who has suffered yet who loves life to the very core. Wieslaw Mysliwskireceived the prestigious Nike Literary Award twice. Stone Upon Stoneis his most celebrated achievement.

Wieslaw Mysliwski 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, Wieslaw Mysliwski has received the Stanislaw Pietak Prize, The Reymont Prize, and The Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award. Stone Upon Stone is widely regarded as his crowning achievement. Bill Johnston is the Chair of the Comparative Literature Department at Indiana University. His translations include Wieslaw Mysliwski's Stone Upon Stone, and Magdalens Tulli's Dreams and Stones, Moving Parts, Flaw and In Red. His 2008 translation of Tadeusz Rózewicz's new poems won the inaugural Found in Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award.