Book Club "COLD SEA STORIES"

Saturday, February 4, 2017 – 2pm to 6pm
Liu Institute, 6476 NW Marine Drive
UBC Campus, Vancouver

Organized by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Vancouver and EUNIC Canada-Vancouver, the next meeting with the EU Book Club will be with a Polish novel by Pawel Huelle.

"COLD SEA STORIES"
A student pedals an old Ukrainian bicycle between striking factories delivering bulletins in the tumultuous first days of the Polish Solidarity movement; a shepherd watches, unseen, as a strange figure disembarks from a pirate ship to bury a chest on the beach; a prisoner in a Berber dungeon recounts his life’s story—the failed pursuit of the world’s very first language—by scrawling in the sand on his cell floor. The characters in this mesmerizing short story collection find themselves, willingly or not, at the heart of epic narratives. Against such backdrops as the Baltic coast, Kashubian folklore, Chinese mysticism, and the 9/11 attacks, this book centers around the vision of the refugee: be it the Chechen woman carrying her newborn child across the Polish border, the survivor of the Gulag reappearing on his friends’ doorstep, or the stranger who befriends the sole resident of a ghostly Mennonite village in the final days of World War II. Offering insight into Polish and Jewish sociopolitical history, this collection is written in the style and traditions of Polish literature.

Novelist and author of a volume of verse, born in Gdańsk in 1957, Huelle is a graduate in Polish of the Gdańsk University, and has also worked in that city as an employee of the "Solidarity" press office, university lecturer, journalist, director of the Gdańsk Polish Television Center and, most recently, as a columnist for Gazeta Wyborcza. Huelle has found enormous success as a writer and been honored with many prestigious awards.


Admission is free, but please register by e-mail:eubookclub@alliancefrancaise.ca
Note: The English translation (by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) of the novel, published by Carcanet Press Ltd. (2013), is available in paperback at www.abebooks.com and paperback and e-books formats at Chapters and Amazon.