About Biały kruk (The White Raven):

… In the monomaniacal nature of his indictment, a veritable lamentation about modern Poland, he reminds one of the French author, Céline, who did the same in his famous book Voyage au bout de la nuit. This Polish author’s novel too is one long and fascinating deluge of language and sound and rhythm… (De Telegraaf)

… Wedged between anecdotal recollections and colourful descriptions of the present, fragments of highly complex philosophical problems such as Time, Identity, and Memory, flash past, wrapped up in simple events or reflections. This skilful ability to present intricate matters in everyday imagery and words is exactly what makes the book extraordinarily fascinating. Stasiuk is, moreover, an exuberantly lyrical author. This is demonstrated especially in his fantastically detailed descriptions of nature. The snow, the light, and the loneliness, the trees and mountains, are rendered time and again in strange, gripping imagery that strikes one as so very true to life that one finds oneself shivering with cold and desolation… (Trouw)

… Andrzej Stasiuk is a delirious narrator who repeatedly made me think of William Faulkner, and notably his book, As I Lay Dying… (NRC Handelsblad)

… In a single fragment, he brings it all together: a mountain slope, a sea wave, a shed, a city. Stasiuk’s imagination is omnipotent… (NRC Handelsblad)

… In a beautiful, language-intoxicated book, Andrzej Stasiuk has his characters drink so deeply from the cup of despair, that at the bottom of that cup the Polish version of the old truth, “worse than death is waiting for death”, becomes visible, viz.: “worse than death is the uncertainty whether life will ever truly begin”… (FAZ)

… An amazing book which, at first, looks like it will be heavy reading, but afterward, when one has entered into its strange world, develops a gripping influential power and fascination. In Olaf Kühl’s translation, we come to know a young epic writer of European rank… (Wolfram Schütte, Frankfurter Rundschau, 28 February 1998)

… Worse than death is waiting for it to come. Like all last words, this one is also to be outdone. In a book written in wonderfully intoxicating language, Andrzej Stasiuk has his characters empty the cup of doubt until the Polish variant of this truth appears at its bottom: «Worse than death is uncertainty as to whether life will begin at all.»… (Thomas Wirtz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 May 1998)

… In Poland, Stasiuk numbers among the most important post-1968 voices. This generation, grouped around the magazine brulion, mistrusted the promises of salvation of socialist realism as much as the political correctness of the Catholic-martyr opposition; both were façade cultures… (Ursula Kiermeier, Mainzer Rhein-Zeitung, 4 June 1998)

… A singular story of friendship, failure and death, told breathlessly in the raw language of suburban Warsaw or, on the other hand, in solicitously-drawn, keenly-piercing pictures… (Martin Pollack, Der Spiegel 15/1998)

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