Tenderness and empathy for loved ones has not overshadowed the writer's sharp skill of observation. The characters are convincing and familiar to readers in a moving story about complex human relations and emotions marked by the twists of history.
Mikołaj Łoziński has said of the book:
The Book is not a literal history of my family. Still, it has been inspired by it. I believe that everyone arrives to this world with a certain baggage from our parents' and our grandparents' experiences. And with time our own experiences accumulate making it heavier and heavier. For this reason, I have decided to look through the baggage to see what's inside and whether there is something I can get rid of to make it easier to move on.
In her review in the Polityka weekly, Justyna Sobolewska writes:
There isn't a subject more important than one's own family -Mikołaj Łoziński starts from such an assumption. (...) and thus an interesting story is created (...). We do not know how true or fictitious it is; enough to say that it is intriguing and literary convincing. Łoziński tells a family story through objects: a coffeemaker, glasses, a wedding ring, a cigarette holder. This book, as the author claims, will also become such a family keepsake. The suggestions made by the closed ones who want to have an impact on the story and dictate the narrator what to write and what not to mention make an interesting narrative solution.
It is a semi-autobiographical novel about three generations of Jewish-Polish intelligentsia and their experiences of 20th century history in Poland. The characters range from prewar Communists; Holocaust survivors; the beneficiaries of Communist Poland; victims of the 1968 anti-Semitic witch-hunt and finally supporters of the democratic opposition. It’s also about their political activism and unstable family life where no one ever behaved normally. The book is a new take on family history, giving a voice to those who would never have had a chance to say what they've been through and how they really feel about it.
Critic Remigiusz Grzela remarked on the concision of language in the book and compares its composition to that of a 'musical piece' that is as accurate as a Swiss watch, he compares the author's talent to that of Różewicz . He also writes,
(...) it has its own rhythm, and it may be, but that one I am not sure of, deprived of any emotions, and that is why it is so powerful, so striking. (...) I was mostly impressed by two chapters of the book, the one grandfather's keys, hundreds of keys and about the grandmother's letters. I was struck by how much one can tell about those who have passed away with the help of objects.
Mikołaj Łoziński (b. 1980) - a writer and photographer; a graduate of the Social Science Department at Sorbonne. He made his debut with a novel Reisefieber (2006), for which he received the Kościelski Award. The book was also nominated for 2007 Nike Literary Prize and translated into six languages. He is also the Laureate of the Peacock Feather Prize and Culture Foundation Award. In January 2012, he won the 2011 Passport Award for Literature.
Mikołaj Łoziński
Książka / The Book
Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, March 2011 123 x 197, 180 pp., paperback ISBN 978-83-08-04587-9
Source: www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl, cited references