Reviews

• “/…/ (a) very original and skillfully written work. In my opinion, in literature, the most important thing is not the topics it addresses, but how it is done – and Wretchedness does it in a magnificent way.”

• “The polyphony of voices is tightly interwoven /…/ arranged into a narrative resembling a complex musical composition /…/ The book ends abruptly, as an avant-garde piece of music might, but the vibrations continue to fill the air.”

• “There is a kind of unholy music in this powerful, punchy, perceptive novel.”

• “Visceral /…/ a fascinating read, the real-life details of which further bolster the fiction /…/ This is nightmarish, impressionistic literature whose disjointed sentences have an associative flow that accumulates to a shocking whole.”

• “Wretchedness is sensitive and compelling.”

• “In virtuosically rendered language, full of the poetry of spoken word, the innovation of contemporary slang, and the philosophical verve of great literature, Tichý gives a voice to the lost ‘brothers’ of his youth.”

• “What can a survivor do with their history? Can you be loyal to the friends you left behind? Andrzej Tichý turns this wretched reality into something poignant. His polyphonic novel has a rough, rhythmic melody and a ferocious rage.”

• “A blurry tornado of voices and timelines, this short novel unspools over eight paragraphs of run-on sentences swirling around the memories of a cellist raised on an estate outside Malmö /…/ the novel builds to an unexpectedly heart-stopping finale, with a frame-breaking time-slip that invites us to reconsider everything we’ve just read as a stylistically radical expression of survivor’s guilt.’”