White Nights
White Nights by Urszula Honek is a debut short story collection published by MTO Press in 2023. This edition, available in English and spanning 159 pages, presents a series of thirteen interconnected stories that explore the tragedies and misfortunes experienced by a group of individuals from the same village in the Beskid Niski region of southern Poland. Each narrative focuses on a different character, illustrating their struggles to cope with the surrounding poverty, disappointment, and despair.
Readers will find a poignant examination of survival and existence in the face of adversity. The stories delve into themes of ruin and hope, emphasizing the characters’ desires to be seen and heard rather than understood. The translation by Kate Webster captures Urszula Honek’s poetic yet grounded prose, bringing to life the unique experiences of these individuals in a way that resonates universally. This collection offers a reflective look at the human condition through the lens of localized experiences.
Official synopsis Publisher
White Nights, the debut short story collection from poet Urszula Honek, is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them. Urszula relates to us, with the sincerest care and honesty, a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard. Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.
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