A Treatise on Shelling Beans

“Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness … Richly textured & wonderfully evocative … Undeniably original.” —Publishers Weekly, starred 

“A marvel of narrative seduction, a rare double masterpiece of storytelling & translation … Mysliwski’s prose, replete with wit & an almost casual intensity, skips nimbly from one emotional register to the next, carrying dramatic force.” —Times Literary Supplement

Our hero & narrator is the aging caretaker of cottages at a summer resort. A mysterious visitor inspires him to share the story of his long life: we witness a happy childhood cut short by the war, his hiding from the Nazis buried in a heap of potatoes, his plodding attempts to play the saxophone, the brutal murder of his family, loves lost but remembered, & footloose travels abroad.

Told in the manner of friends & neighbors swapping stories over the mundane task of shelling beans—in the grand oral tradition of Myśliwski’s celebrated Stone Upon Stone—each anecdote, lived experience, & memory accrues cross-stitched layers of meaning. By turns hilarious & poignant, A Treatise on Shelling Beans is an epic recounting of a life that, while universal, is anything but ordinary.

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Wiesław Myśliwski is the only writer to have twice received the Nike Prize, Poland’s most prestigious literary award: in 1997 for his novel Horizon & again in 2007 for A Treatise on Shelling Beans. He worked as an editor at the People’s Publishing Cooperative & at the magazines Regiony & Sycyna. In addition to the Nike Prize, Myśliwski has received the Stanisław Pietak Prize, the Arts Ministry Prize, the State Prize, the Reymont Prize, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, & the Golden Sceptre Award.