Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Archipelago Books (2007), Paperback, 175 pages
Description
Refugees cause a surreal disruption in a quiet suburb. A prescient allegory of extermination. A single streetcar line runs around the sleepy square of an unnamed city. One day - out of nowhere - refugees pour from the streetcar and set up camp in the square. The residents grow hostile and eventually take extreme action.
User reviews
LibraryThing member twlite
Flaw
by: Magdalena Tulli
I won this book for a Goodreads/First reads giveaway
This is a Polish story that has been translated to English. I found this story to be timeless in it's meaning. A train full of refugees show up unexpected to a town. They are kept in the square. The story seems to be about
I think this story is a warning to both people traveling to different cultures and how people can have the ability to take advantage of others that is unjustified by the power of illusion from the clothes they wear, by others who have no way of knowing the difference. In other words, "beware, looks can be decieving".
This is a great story with a meaning. I highly recommend it.
by: Magdalena Tulli
I won this book for a Goodreads/First reads giveaway
This is a Polish story that has been translated to English. I found this story to be timeless in it's meaning. A train full of refugees show up unexpected to a town. They are kept in the square. The story seems to be about
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ones "view" of someone when they are a foreigner. How these foreigners are taken advantage of by one of the towns people. He puts on a "uniform" that is left behind and begins to give commands that simply satisfies his own revenge.I think this story is a warning to both people traveling to different cultures and how people can have the ability to take advantage of others that is unjustified by the power of illusion from the clothes they wear, by others who have no way of knowing the difference. In other words, "beware, looks can be decieving".
This is a great story with a meaning. I highly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
The first ten pages of this novel are the best ten pages I've read since I finished Erasmus' 'Praise of Folly.' Tulli creates an amazing double allegory kind of thing, in which the sewing of clothes by a tailor ends up standing for, in increasing order of interest, a) making clothes; b) writing
And then for no apparent reason it turns into Jose Saramago, without the humor, beauty or weirdness. Now if you like your fiction without any of those things, and without named characters, and without much in the way of syntactical variation (possibly the translator's fault), and with a few moments of meta-fiction ("If I am the maid, I feel..."), you may well love this. And Tulli is obviously crazy smart, and capable of pretty great things.
But damnit, this novel is just really boring. The tailor thing should have been tacked on to the front of a much better novel.
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fiction; c) living in the world ("The needle hurtles unrestrainedly towards its only goal--the final calculation of materials and labor"). And then for no apparent reason it turns into Jose Saramago, without the humor, beauty or weirdness. Now if you like your fiction without any of those things, and without named characters, and without much in the way of syntactical variation (possibly the translator's fault), and with a few moments of meta-fiction ("If I am the maid, I feel..."), you may well love this. And Tulli is obviously crazy smart, and capable of pretty great things.
But damnit, this novel is just really boring. The tailor thing should have been tacked on to the front of a much better novel.
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LibraryThing member Paulagraph
Diverse correspondences come to mind: Kafka, Di Chirico, Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, the African-American book of folk tales The People Could Fly.
FLAW is a tale about tales, an allegory, a stage set; yet imbued with enough historical and psychological resonance that its painted props and
A large group of refugees from another story, destitute “outsiders,” appear out of nowhere; they don’t exist until they board the streetcar at one stop and get off at the other stop in front of the government offices. The same can be said of a group of military officers, airmen, who don’t know why or how they have come to be here and who await a helicopter, which finally arrives at the end of the story to take them away. So, there is an outside and an inside to this story, although we are never allowed to see beyond the painted plywood perimeter of the square. (“It is the backdrops that determine the look of the world . . . . Closing the space, the boards open it up at the same time, offering an illusory distance that seems to stretch into the unseen suburbs.”) Even the helicopter is constructed of cardboard and silver foil, yet manages to fly out of the story with the officers aboard. Rumor has it that the refugees themselves will be taken away in taxis to America; although these taxis never arrive, the refugees mysteriously disappear at the end of the tale (having been sealed into the basement of the cinema and left there to suffocate upon the orders of the new Commander of the Guard). There is a political coup, a band of delinquent boys (refugee orphans and local boys in cahoots); a diverse assortment of uniforms, a revolver loaded with one bullet; a servant girl who is dishonored and dismissed, a pompous student who meets his due, and assorted square-dwellers (never rising to the level of townspeople, since there is no town). In short, many of the elements of a conventional narrative, although a conventional narrative this decidedly is not. Here we are in story time and story place, and yet some of the rules resemble those of “real” time and “real” places, for instance: “It is a rule in this story that the weaker person carries the greater burden.” As for other rules, “In principal the loaded revolver ought sooner or later to be fired, though they were still counting on the imperfect nature of the rules and the fact that from time to time they failed to operate. Maybe this rule too would not work—and even if it did, let it at least affect someone else.”
FLAW is a tale about tales, an allegory, a stage set; yet imbued with enough historical and psychological resonance that its painted props and
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faceless characters who engage in no dialog provoke both intellectual and emotional involvement in the “story.” The setting (also, the set) is an urban square with one streetcar line; there is no elsewhere. (“The story is not taking place here or there. It fits entirely into itself as into a glass globe . . . .”) The most important thing here is to have the right costume; for in FLAW, in the most fundamental way, clothes make the man.A large group of refugees from another story, destitute “outsiders,” appear out of nowhere; they don’t exist until they board the streetcar at one stop and get off at the other stop in front of the government offices. The same can be said of a group of military officers, airmen, who don’t know why or how they have come to be here and who await a helicopter, which finally arrives at the end of the story to take them away. So, there is an outside and an inside to this story, although we are never allowed to see beyond the painted plywood perimeter of the square. (“It is the backdrops that determine the look of the world . . . . Closing the space, the boards open it up at the same time, offering an illusory distance that seems to stretch into the unseen suburbs.”) Even the helicopter is constructed of cardboard and silver foil, yet manages to fly out of the story with the officers aboard. Rumor has it that the refugees themselves will be taken away in taxis to America; although these taxis never arrive, the refugees mysteriously disappear at the end of the tale (having been sealed into the basement of the cinema and left there to suffocate upon the orders of the new Commander of the Guard). There is a political coup, a band of delinquent boys (refugee orphans and local boys in cahoots); a diverse assortment of uniforms, a revolver loaded with one bullet; a servant girl who is dishonored and dismissed, a pompous student who meets his due, and assorted square-dwellers (never rising to the level of townspeople, since there is no town). In short, many of the elements of a conventional narrative, although a conventional narrative this decidedly is not. Here we are in story time and story place, and yet some of the rules resemble those of “real” time and “real” places, for instance: “It is a rule in this story that the weaker person carries the greater burden.” As for other rules, “In principal the loaded revolver ought sooner or later to be fired, though they were still counting on the imperfect nature of the rules and the fact that from time to time they failed to operate. Maybe this rule too would not work—and even if it did, let it at least affect someone else.”
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Awards
Nagroda Literacka Gdynia (Special Award — 2007)
Language
Original publication date
2006 (original Polish)
2007 (English translation)
2007 (French translation)
Physical description
175 p.; 6.52 inches
ISBN
0979333016 / 9780979333019