Flights a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy is Olga
Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel
with an in-depth exploration of the human body broaching life death motion and migration.
From the seventeenth century we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen who
dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century we have the
story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after
his death. In the nineteenth century we follow Chopin's heart as it makes the covert journey
from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older
husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands and the harrowing story
of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island.
With her signature grace and insight Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer
of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind.
