A mischievous fairy tale about transformation, emotion and ambiguity. These are bracing remedies for a world that too often forces us toward stasis, indifference and binaries ... As ever, Tokarczuk’s prose — and Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ glorious translation thereof from the Polish — will knock the wind out of you ... Resonant.
It’s an odd, fascinating book—a blackly serious joke—from an author of great daring and intelligence ... The writing, in a cultivated translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, shares the easygoing gait and twinkling irony of Mann’s novel ... It makes for absorbing if often mystifying reading, but what stands out most is the philosophical conflict it stages between rationality and folk belief.
