Well, it's not often I get to read the work of a Nobel Prize winning author the day after she is awarded the prize! 'The Knight' is a short story by Olga Tokarczuk and translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft. This is the blurb from Words without Borders:
I subscribe to a site called Words without Borders, a source of very interesting writing from all sort of sources. Today, their newsletter contained a short story by Olga Tokarczuk, familiar to many readers for her novel Drive Your Plow [sic] Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones or House of Day, House of Night which was shortlisted for the IMPAC Literary Award. But #FailingToKeepUp I haven't read either of these, so I was pleased to have a chance to catch up a little bit...
Olga Tokarczuk, who first appeared in our pages in 2005 with an excerpt from her wrenching tale of wartime survival, Final Stories, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. She then returned in 2008 with this short story, "The Knight," translated by Jennifer Croft. Tokarczuk's explorations of relationships under pressure, whether political or internal, combine a keen sense of character with a sure hand at narrative to capture the essence of humanity. As a couple's alienation plays out over a chessboard, Tokarczuk's deft portrayal of feints and attacks maps a marriage at stalemate.
The opening lines with that single word 'snatched' show the reader where the story is going from the outset:
At first she tried struggling with the locks, but they were obviously not in sync, because when she managed to turn the key in one of them, the other stayed locked—and vice versa. The wind came in gusts off the sea, winding her wool scarf around her face. Finally he set down both bags in the driveway and snatched the keys out of her hand. He managed to get the door open immediately.
Next thing, he's ticking her off for sweeping the sand off the deck. He has decided they won't be using it at that time of the year, and he has decided that he's the one who gets to decide, and he's the one who gets to tell her what she should be doing.
He puts the TV on immediately, and she protests and wants to say something else as well—but she doesn't.
Though the reader's sympathies lie with the woman because we know more about her inner thoughts, she annoys him too. He hates it when she smokes, and he doesn't say anything. Because though their marriage is stale, and their irritability levels are high, there's enough good will to try and make their first night at the beach house a good one, so they don't risk the second bottle of wine and they play chess. She lets him win, and he knows she let him. They decide to play a more serious game, one that might last for days...
In 6000+ words, the story plays out over their walks on the beach, the loss of the knight from the chessboard, and their inconclusive night together in bed. Their mutual hostilities have causes big and small, but the most telling, I thought, was her dislike of the way he photographs her all the time, objectifying her and not really seeing her as a person.
There's not much in this story to show why Tokarczuk is a Nobel laureate. #DuckingForCover Stories of marriages bad, mad or sad, are a bit of yawn IMO, and they're all much like each other. The Nobel citation reads 'for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.' I'm not entirely sure that I know what that means, but one day when I get round to reading one of her books, I might find out!
If you would like to read The Knight too, follow this link to Words without Borders (and subscribe to their site while you're at it).
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