Dreams and Stones
Written by Magdalena Tulli
Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

Dreams and Stones is a small masterpiece, one of the most extraordinary works of literature to come out of Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. In sculpted, poetic prose reminiscent of Bruno Schulz, it tells the story of the emergence of a great city. In Tulli's hands myth, metaphor, history, and narrative are combined to magical effect. Dreams and Stones is about the growth of a city, and also about all cities; at the same time it is not about cities at all, but about how worlds are created, transformed , and lost through worlds alone. A stunning debut by one of Europe's finest new writers.

Winner of the 1995 Koscielski Foundation Prize in Poland

"Powerful imagery caught in a sinewy, architectural, elegiac prose. An inner-outer dance of cityscape with the taut emotion, terror and psyche of the 'human.' Where are we? What magical zone of dream and stone? We are inhabitants of the wild, brilliant imagination of Magdalena Tulli. This book is a great pleasure to read: deeply provocative, intuitive, haunting. 'I hunt among stones' was Charles Olson's probing line, a mission manifested here with full beauty and finesse. And rendered from Polish to English in an inspired translation by Bill Johnston."
ANNE WALDMAN

MAGDALENA TULLI (1955 - ) is one of Poland's leading writers. She lives in Warsaw, where she works as a psychologist and translator. She has translated the work of Marcel Proust and Italo Calvino into Polish. Her first book, Dreams and Stones won the prestigious Koscielski award, while Moving Parts was nominated for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Flaw, Tulli's most personal work to date, has been short-listed for the 2007 Nike Prize, Poland's most prestigious literary award.

BILL JOHNSTON is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Second Language Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1999 he received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship for Translation. His translation of Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones won the 2005 Award for Best Translation into English from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. Johnston is among the most outstanding translators of Polish literature into English and in 2008 he received the first Found in Translation Award for Tadeusz Rozewicz's New Poems.

Publishing House: Archipelago Books, Brooklyn 2004
HardCover book measuring 5.75" x 6.75"
110 pages
English Language Version

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