on A country road, like any other, you might say. But no, “the Seven”, the Ziemowit Szczereks novel owes its title, is much more than that. She is the “Queen of Poland’s roads, the backbone of the Polish state”. You will apply through the whole country, from South to North, runs, and Vice versa, of course, but when you’re with Pavel, the main character, on the road, only this one direction. Because Pawel is a Journalist, and driving his Opel Vectra from Krakow to Warsaw, where he has an important appointment.
Pawel works in any renowned Medium, but in the case of a Fake News specialized Internet portal, and when reading increasingly of the suspicion that the important date exists only in his head, especially since the Latter is pounding after last night, still plenty of the course. On the eve of Halloween, and the Krakow’s old town had turned into “one big Pub, Alko-Disneyland” before the wild Goings-on in all saints, the most beautiful of all Polish feasts, it was passed.
access another example of provincialism, parochialism, nationalism or chauvinism
Pawel leaves no opportunity, alcohol and drugs, which makes him very sociable, perceptive and imaginative. With the result that his escapade to an adventurous journey through the Polish province, and at the same time to breath funny-irreverent monologue. Basically, it doesn’t matter what his look is all, what he describes seems kind of distorted, caricatured, though it is a razor-sharp take stock of the true conditions in Poland. Already the scenery he sees along the “Seven” – full of unplanned development, ugly architecture, broken roads and viaducts, giant billboards and graffiti, gigantic monuments of Communist provenance, and cheaper Bars, affects him plenty of repellent. But at the same time he must admit that he likes the whole “Rumgepfusche” somehow.
Similarly, to him with the people. Every encounter means another example of provincialism, narrow-mindedness, nationalism, or chauvinism, often coupled with the propensity for nagging. Some are dissatisfied because they believe, to be constantly ripped off, the others see globalisation as the source of all Evil and want a strong, economically independent state. “Polish banks, Polish cars, Polish Computer, the armed forces,” on count one, while another with a simple “everything Polish. Polish Poland“ describes. This fixation on your own country knows Pawel, at length, the encounters will help him to understand the sources of this fixation is better to name the Fears and phobias of his countrymen more precise, to the journeyman as the real people he met, and soon other Design.
It is finally, all saints day, the day of the dead, the idea that some have returned to the earth, requires no special imagination. In Pavels case, certainly not after he joins after a traffic accident, a group of Hipsters, which put him with hallucinogenic substances in stupor. So it takes not long until he discovers a castle of monstrous ugliness, to admire in the many Polish kings, and of the Vision-possessed, you could be alive and again all of the disasters cause, which crowd in Polish history – to all of you the fight is declared.
Fast, manic, absurd, peppered with literary and cinematic References
From the historical demons, it is not far to the current. To handles about the idea of Putin the country, especially as this calls Central Poland, by the “Seven” leads, especially the former dependence on Russia in memory: in the Communist times, but also in the years of the “Congress of Poland”, in which the tsarist Empire had to Say that. So, Pavel imagines that Russian tanks “price series of low pavilions with a vegetable stand, flower shop, Doner, clothes by the kilo, haberdashery and rotten dive” crush, and this associative leap from the kings about Putin and the Polish small business is just as funny as understandable.
