Tłum. The Murderers' Love

Are you quick to adapt to a new environment? Are you in favour of stabilising actions? Have you ever killed a man? Resting his elbows on the table top, Hilt gave his answers composedly, realizing that he had never actually thought about all these things in that way. He never questioned his own life, positioned himself in some coordinate system, yes – no – yes – yes – no, as in the game “connect the dots”… As the interview dragged on, he came to reflect more deeply on the meaning of what he was saying and to feel more and more strongly that it was all some sort of theatre in which he was both the audience and the actor. What did you feel when you saw a dead body for the first time?

The characters in The Murderers’ Love have many faces, names and identities. The paid killer, the dying actor, the prophet, the man working on a scrap-heap contaminated with radioactive waste, the run-of-the-mill tourist. Each of them has his own story, beginning and ending at the very same point, the world’s sorest point: human solitude. Regardless of time and place, each of them has to face, on his own, the immediate reality and that which poses the greatest threat of all – his own self.    

“The extraordinary, albeit simple sentences create extraordinary characters. And the extraordinary characters get involved in extraordinary situations. This is a brilliantly written book. Full of half-silences and mystery: the real mystery, the one we constantly struggle to solve. If ineffectively, then so be it. That’s what good literature is: the account of our failures in recognizing reality. That and nothing more”.

Paweł Huelle