In Red is set in the mythical town of Stitchings in Poland after a Swedish invasion and the fourth partition of Poland. It is a "possible world", which in many ways resembles the real world, but is not fixed or permanent. In her review of the book on kgbbar.com Iza Wojciechowska writes,
As Stitchings goes from being a war zone to a tourist attraction to a bustling factory town to a town full of degenerates, and as the perpetual night gives way to perpetual day and back to perpetual night again, it’s clear that it’s is a strange place populated by strange people.
Stitchings is indeed a very strange place where protagonists die even before the reader takes interest in their stories, or are simply replaced by other characters. The girl we might consider a potential protagonist dies and spends the rest of the story locked up in a room reading love stories while a single bullet can continue to orbit the earth, completely ignored, before 'it reappears in the town thirty pages later, firmly lodging itself in a man's chest'.
According to the publishers note, the book "is full of haunting descriptions of the town and its inhabitants, who act out their dramas, undergo various ordeals, and live and die without anyone really noticing - each background like a theatre set, to be replaced by another". It is Tulli's mystical, evocative style of writing that captivates the reader.
The English-language edition of In Red was translated by Bill Johnston who has also translated Tulli's Dreams and Stones (Sny i kamienie) (2005), Moving Parts (Tryby) (2005), and Flaw (Skaza)(2007), all published by Archipelago books. In Red joins the now almost complete Tulli library at Archipelago press with only one book missing - her most recent volume of short stories Włoskie szpilki, published in Polish in 2011.
Bill Johnston's translation of In Red has been nominated for 2012 Best Translated Book Award, where it joins Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone upon Stone, also translated by Johnston. Stone upon Stone finally beat out In Red for the main prize, announced in early May.
See reviews of In Red: www.rochester.edu, quarterlyconversation.com, kgbbar.com
Interview with translator Bill Johnston at polishwriting.net
Magdalena Tulli talks about In Red with Jessa Crispin at kirkusreview.com
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