Wioletta Greg

Set in rural south Poland in the 1980s, this novella follows a young girl's passage to adulthood in her village, where folklore lives alongside religious belief and peculiar personal metamorphoses are the normWiola lives in a close-knit agricultural community. Wiola has a black cat called Blackie. Wiola's father was a deserter but now he's a taxidermist. Wiola's mother tells her that killing spiders brings on storms. Wiola must never enter the seamstress's 'secret' room. Wiola collects matchbox labels. Wiola is a good Catholic girl brought up with folktales and nurtured on superstition. Wiola lives in a Poland that is both very recent and lost in time. Wiola's life is peculiar. Wiola's life is just a life.Following Wiola's progress from childhood to adolescence, Swallowing Mercury is a novella about the ordinary passing of years filled with extraordinary days. In vivid prose, filled with texture, colour and sound, it depicts an enchanting world of horse-drawn carts and local markets, folk customs and political unrest, freshly-picked cherries and rival cigarette brands. It is a precise and sensitive character study of a clever, strong-willed, thoughtful girl who grows into a unique young woman, both an observer of and a participant in her world.

Swallowing Mercury

Eliza Marciniak

Zelene Voćke

One hundred years since the outbreak of the First World War, the Polish poet Wioletta Greg undertakes a literary journey through her own family history, exploring in both poetry and prose a century of life, death, love and tragedy. With passion, tenderness and humour, she traces a path from the lives of her grandparents in early twentieth century Poland, through two world wars, life under Communism and the subsequent liberation, to her own experiences as a migrant living in Britain on the Isle of Wight.

Finite Formulae and Theories of Chance

On the path to self-discovery, a woman encounters secrets, shame, and independence in post-Communist Poland.

Accommodations

Wiola vive in una comunità agricola molto unita, ha un gatto nero di nome Nerino, suo padre è un disertore diventato tassidermista, sua madre le dice che uccidere i ragni porta lampi e fulmini. Wiola non deve mai entrare nella stanza segreta della sarta, colleziona le etichette delle scatole dei fiammiferi, è una brava ragazza cattolica cresciuta tra fiabe e superstizioni. È questo il perimetro di un’adolescenza a Hektary, villaggio rurale nella Polonia degli anni ottanta. I ricordi di Wiola sono precisi, intensi, sensuali: giocosità e capricci emergono dai pettegolezzi delle donne del villaggio, dalle voci di visite dal papa e dalla raccolta delle ciliegie, mentre i disordini politici e gli uomini predatori proiettano ombre scure su una vita perlopiù spensierata. Wioletta Greg debutta nella prosa con una storia di formazione dai contorni vividi raccontando il fortissimo legame con la sua terra.

Wioletta Greg

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