Farewells to Plasma

Fiction. Few Polish prose writers of the past ten years have attracted as much delight and bewilderment as Natasza Goerke. Her stories, which are commonly fastened with predicates like surreal, grotesque, ludicrous, ironic, and extravagant, call to mind the absurdist and parabolic work of Daniil Kharms, Slawomir, Mrozek, Clarice Lispector, and Antonio Tabucchi. FAREWELLS TO PLASMA is a selection of Goerke’s short stories and prose from her three volumes in Polish The transgression and abolition of borders, the permeation of East and West, tradition and modernity, dream and reality - these are the narrative coordinates of Goerke’s universe, teeming with those who are wandering, searching, yearning - and, chiefly, loving-S?ddeutsche Zeitung.