Accommodations - Softcover

Greg, Wioletta

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1945492236 ISBN 13: 9781945492235

Publisher: Transit Books, 2019

Synopsis

A continuation of her Man Booker-nominated debut, Accommodations is Swallowing Mercury all grown up

Accommodations follows Wiola after she leaves her childhood village, a close-knit agricultural community in Poland where the Catholic calendar and local gossip punctuate daily life. Her new independence in the nearby city of Czestochowa is far from a fresh start, as she moves between a hostel and a nuns’ convent brimming with secrets, taking in the stories of those around her. In the same striking prose that drew readers to her critically acclaimed debut, Accommodations navigates Wiola’s winding path to self-discovery.

About this title

About the Author

WIOLETTA GREG is a Polish writer; she was born in a small village in 1974 in the Jurassic Highland of Poland. In 2006, she left Poland and moved to the UK. Between 1998–2012 she published six poetry volumes, as well as a novel, Swallowing Mercury, which spans her childhood and her experience of growing up in Communist Poland. Her works have been translated into seven languages.

Review

"Jewel-like in its intensity, Greg's latest novel is a strong follow-up to her first.—Kirkus Reviews

"Couched in melodious, resonant writing, this fanciful meditation on individual maturation and spirituality will satisfy and stimulate."—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Swallowing Mercury

"Warm, subversively funny and elegiac for a lost rural life but unflinching in its depiction of the darker strands of Polish society, Swallowing Mercury is constructed around a spine of resistance and individuality."—Times Literary Supplement

"The book’s appearance in the U.S. is a great gift . . . Greg’s masterful first novel is charming, seductive, and sinister by turns."—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Greg’s fictional debut combines the opposing literary styles of socialist realism and magic realism in intoxicating sentences that convey sensuous detail so delightfully that one feels as though one is eating watermelon outdoors in summer."—Booklist (Starred Review)

"Marciniak’s deft translation amplifies the engrossing sensory details of Greg’s heartbreaking and enlivening novel."—Publishers Weekly

"This enchantingly elliptical fiction debut by British-domiciled Polish poet Wioletta Greg sparkles with a gem-like quality. Thanks to Eliza Marciniak's crisp translation, it brings freshness even to the crowded genre of the novella-sized bildungsroman, and can be devoured alongside the best coming-of-age translations of recent years, such as Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov."—The Guardian

"Wioletta Greg's first novel shines with a surreal and unsettling vigor. As an award-winning poet, Greg writes with a lyricism that brings alive the charms and dangers of Wiola's life."—The Financial Times

"Swallowing Mercury is both magical and sinister, a memoir and a fairytale and, like Wiola, completely captivating."—The Irish News

"Greg writes with a precise, strange charm, and the poet’s acute sensitivity to detail. Little by little, I felt the presence of young Wiola appear beside me—vital, quick-witted and curious, picking her way through the dark woods of faith, family, sex, and politics as if in some melancholy fairytale. I experienced the book like a series of cool, clear drinks, each more intoxicating than the last."—Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

"I have been utterly 'swallowed' by this odd yet oddly familiar folk novella—somewhere between memoir and fairytale—which has magic and menace in perfect measure."—Sarah Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither

"I really loved this strange book, which is sometimes sinister and sometimes lovely, and many other things besides."—Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing

"This book comes the way memory does, in fragments, like something overheard or glimpsed through a gap in a door. It might feel as if you shouldn’t be listening, should turn away, but it is impossible to do so."—Daisy Johnson, author of Fen

"A sparkling little gem of a book—there is a freshness and truthfulness in Wioletta Greg's writing that reminded me of Elena Ferrante and Tove Jansson."—Carys Davies, author of The Redemption of Galen Pike

"Swallowing Mercury shows how the overwhelming forces of beauty, politics, mortality, violence, and hope can animate even the smallest moments of life."—Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

About this edition

• Publisher: Transit Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1945492236
• ISBN 13: 9781945492235
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170