Why a Booktrail?
A story of the adult world encroaching on the child’s. A time, a country lost and found
Swallowing Mercury
What you need to know before your trail
Wiola lives in a close-knit agricultural community in a Poland that is both very recent and lost in time. She has a black cat called Blackie and her father is a taxidermist although he did used to be a deserter Wiola is a good Catholic girl brought up with fables and nurtured on superstition – her mother tells her that killing spiders brings on storms. She is told that she must never enter the seamstress’s ‘secret’ room.
There are lots of rules and regulations in Wiola’s unstructed and unordered life but she likes to collect matchboxes – a small place to place things of interest to her. A world in minature. Something to hold and to hold on to…
Travel Guide
Hektary
Wiola writes about this small village in Poland’s Jurassic Highland where she herself grew up during the dying decade of communism. This slim book, just two dozen short chapters, is a coming-of-age story, clearly based on Greg’s life: the narrator, Wiolka, shares her name with the author.
The translator explains:
“The novel is set in the Jurassic uplands of Southern Poland in and around the small fictional village of Hektary in the 1970s and 80s.
This was an important time for Poland and in the chapter The Little Paint Girl, there is a moment defined for a whole generation of young Poles. AInstead of the popular children’s show, a state of war was announced instead.
Attempts were made to crush the opposition. A failing economy and frustration with decades of communist rule and combined to create a powerful challenge to the authority of the government.
Life in the village of Hektary is punctuated more by folk traditions and the Church calendar than by political events but political rumbles can be heard in the distance from Lech Walesa’s Nobel Peace Prize to Pop John Paul II’s morale-building visit to his homeland in 1983”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Swallowing Mercury
Author/Guide: Wioletta Greg Destination: Hektary, Poland Departure Time: 1970s, 1980s
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