Tales of Galicia.(Book Review)

Chicago Review, March, 2005 by Boykewich, Stephen

Andrzej Stasiuk. Tales of Galicia. Trans. Margarita Nafpaktitis. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2003. 140 pp. $14 At a time in American literary publishing when the recurrence of any one character in any two stories will win a manuscript the designation "A Novel," a first glance at Andrzej Stasiuk's Tales of Galicia may seem reason for concern.

When did this cynical marketing trend cross the Atlantic? What sort of novel is Tales, a book of 130 pages and fifteen chapters, each of which has not only its own title but its own central character and mode of narration? Is the front-cover claim of novelhood a misguided attempt to sweeten the deal for an Anglophone readership more likely to turn to the sermons of Meister Eckhart for subway reading than to...