Tai Gu and other times

Author: Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Taiguo is a place located at the center of the universe. If one walks quickly, it takes about an hour to travel from north to south through Taiguo, and the same time from east to west. However, if someone walks slowly, observes everything along the way, and thinks deeply, it would take a whole day to walk around Taiguo at this pace, from morning to evening. Taiguo is a fictional village in a remote part of Poland. Its four boundaries are guarded by four angelic leaders: Raphael in the north, Gabriel in the south, Michael in the west, and Uriel in the east. The boundaries of Taiguo are surrounded by an invisible and impassable wall—those who think they have left Taiguo are trapped in a dream before this wall, and upon waking, they turn back home, mistaking the dream for a memory. The people of Taiguo village desire authenticity, and their souls exude the primal aura of the primordial era, with love and hatred equally intense: Izydor loves Ruta with his lonely and primitive life—Ruta, the daughter born in a summer night liaison between the who nourishes the many men of Taiguo and the tree that transforms into a handsome man, the Ophir tree. Ruta can see the invisible boundaries of Taiguo, hear the pulse of the mycelial heart once every eighty years, and reach the center of Taiguo. Ruta loves Izydor, and she torments him endlessly in love. In the throes of desire, one lives and dies alone, going and coming alone. When Ruta crosses the boundary and heads to the distant, warm south, how can Izydor break free from the constraints of the four windows of the world... Olga Tokarczuk, through eighty-four short chapters titled with different times, presents the changes in the human affairs of a fictional village over eighty years in a fragmented yet connected manner, reflecting the context of the existence of all things. Her writing is light, poetic, and filled with mythic resonance, like an eternal dream where life, love, and the memory of time flow.