title: Stone Upon Stone
author: Wieslaw Mysliwski
description: <b>Winner of 2012 PEN Translation Prize <br /></b><br /><b> Winner ofThree Percents Best Translated Book Award 2012</b><br /><br /><br />"This is an epic novel about modernization in rural Poland." <b> <i>Publisher's Weekly</i>, 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read</b><br /><br />Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness, Mysliwski masterfully renders in Johnston's gorgeous translation (Mysliwski's first into English) life in a Polish farming village before and after WWII. . . . Richly textured and wonderfully evocative. <b> <i>Publishers Weekly</i>, starred review <br /></b><br />Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish.  <b><i>Kirkus</i>, starred review</b> <br /><br />Wieslaw Mysliwski's vast novel is an artistic accomplishment of the highest order A masterpiece beyond the shadow of a doubt. <b> Henryk Bereza</b> <br /><br />A hymn in praise of life. <b> Krysytna Dabrowska</b> <br /><br />A marvel of narrative seduction, a rare double masterpiece of storytelling and translation.. . . Mysliwski's prose, replete with wit and an almost casual intensity, skips nimbly from one emotional register to the next, carrying dramatic force. . . . He manages tone so finely, orchestrating a perfect continuity between the tragic and the comic and, ultimately, between life and death . . . In his translation Bill Johnston navigates Mysliwski's modulations with skill and the lightness of touch that is generally the face of profound labor. <b><i> Times Literary Supplement <br /></i></b><br />A marvelous, garrulous book ... The grandest example of a genre ... Szymek's rustic voice narrates with a naivete and an eloquence that are equally endearing, reaching into every corner of the Polish countryside like a great shining sun. <b><i> The National</i></b> <br /><br />Sweeping . . . irreverent . . With winning candor . . . chronicles the modernization of rural Poland and celebrates the persistence of desire. <b><i> The New Yorker<br /><br /></i></b>"[Myliwski]belongs in the first rank of modern Eastern European novelists. . . .The prose ... is vividly concrete, blazing with precise physical details, and brusque (though never the less acute) even when it comes to thorny philosophical questions."<b><i><b><i>Los Angeles Review of Books</i></b></i></b>
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  Copyright © Wiesław Myśliwski, 1999  
  English translation copyright © Bill Johnston 2010  
  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2010
  
  This translation is published by arrangement with Społeczny Instytut  
  Wydawniczy Znak, Kraków (Poland)
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted
  in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  
  Mysliwski, Wieslaw  
  [Kamien na kamieniu. English]  
  Stone Upon Stone / Wieslaw Mysliwski; translated from the Polish by Bill
  Johnston. –  
  1st Archipelago Books ed.  
  p. cm.  
  eisbn 978-0-914671-01-5  
  eBook ISBN: 978-0-914671-02-2  
  I. Johnston, Bill, 1960- II. Title.  
  PG7172.Y8K3613 2010 891.8’5373 – dc22  
  2010038451
  
  Archipelago Books  
  232 Third St. #A111  
  Brooklyn, NY 11215  
  [www.archipelagobooks.org](http://www.archipelagobooks.org)
  
  Cover art: Nikifor  
  Jacket design by D