A Large Czesław Miłosz With a Dash of Elvis Presley

Tania Skarynkina’s “A Large Czeslaw Milosz with a Dash of Elvis Presley” is a dazzling collection of essays and stories full of wit, intimacy, and imagination. From musings over Karelian cranberries to an unfinished pilgrimage to meet Milosz in Krakow, Skarynkina blends the ordinary and the extraordinary with a voice both playful and profound. Translated into English by Jim Dingley, the book earned the English PEN Award in 2018, bringing Belarusian literature to new audiences with charm and originality.

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Sitting by her window with a glass of cranberries in sugar syrup bought from a woman in the market who assured her they came from Karelia, she muses “Perhaps they have some other kind of effect when you eat them. Spiritual maybe? So I eat and wait for the Karelian cranberries to work their magic on me.” Skarynkina is impelled to spend the last of her money on a trip to Krakow to meet Czeslaw Milosz but never finds his address, so he remains to her an idol like Elvis Presley dressed in gold lame. Each story has a charm and imaginative flight of its own.

Review
‘She writes as if penning a letter to a close friend, loosely, intimately, but never less engagingly…’ 
— Alan Taylor ― The Herald

Country Life wrote of Skarynkina’s essays that they ‘exist at the very edge of what we can imagine.’
― Country Life

About the Author
Tania Skarynkina was born in 1969 in Smarhon, Belarus. She worked as a postwoman, journalist, and illustrator. She writes poetry in Russian and essays in Belarusian. Her works have been translated into English, Polish, Czech and Hebrew. Her collection of stories, A Large Czeslaw Milosz with a Dash of Elvis Presley, which was awarded the English PEN Award in 2018.

Jim Dingley is a respected translator and expert in European languages and studies, with associations with Imperial College London and University College London. He has a lifetime’s worth of experience translating Belarusian into English.