Jacek Dukaj

Other Songs

Excerpt

Other Songs is the latest demonstration of Jacek Dukaj’s unusual and highly fertile imagination. This time he has invented a world where ancient Greek ideas about nature are in force, with the theory of the elements at the fore, despite which it is a reality dominated by advanced technology. Naturally, this world is nothing like ours, but has its own calendar; the information that the action takes place in the twelfth century after the fall of Rome does not tell the reader much, because we are not told when Rome fell. Some of the settings where events take place are more recognisable, including Europe, Africa, and the Moon, which people have colonised, and also what is loosely termed “cosmic space”. But the most tangible element in the book is the main hero, a valiant commander battling against the forces of evil, who is at the same time a subtle rational thinker. At ground level Other Songs belongs to the genre of science fiction, but you can also find elements of fantasy, political fiction and above all philosophical debate in it (including some successful paraphrasing of ancient Greek thought). This is one of the most ambitious, and also one of the longest (at over 600 pages of dense print) works of Polish fantasy literature to have appeared in the past decade.

                                                                                   Dariusz Nowacki