Description
Longlisted for the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize
Bringing together the best of Marius Kociejowski’s travel writing, Zoroaster’s Children snags on the borderline between dream and meaning, offering unusual glimpses of some of the places, exotic or otherwise, the author has been. Attracted to society’s outcasts—as it is these, he argues, which point towards an underground of conformity that will not contain them—Kociejowksi offers in these essays glimpses of locales as diverse and seemingly divergent as Prague, Tunisia, Moscow, Aleppo and Toronto, among others. By turns empathetic and virtuosic, and always on the lookout for the deeper meaning seeded inside language, the essays in Zoroaster’s Children evince the deep absorption in a people and a place which are the hallmark of all great travel writers.
PRAISE FOR ZOROASTER’S CHILDREN
“Poet and travel writer Kociejowski journeys widely and writes to ‘describe the world’ and make deeper inquiries into human nature … Highly recommended for its poetic presentation of experiences in different locations, this account is inspired by the past and a plethora of emotions.”—Library Journal, Starred Review
“[Kociejowski is] one of the most evocative travel writers to emerge in the last decade … He may well be peerless … All the essays feature a laser-like focus on individuals and a relative indifference to their surroundings … In city after city—Prague, Moscow, Toronto—Kociejowski does the same thing: encounters people, pays extraordinary attention to them, and captures them indelibly.”—Maclean’s
“Travel for Kociejowski is a metaphor for life – movement toward an uncertain and possibly non-existent destination, without a map or compass.”—Patrick Kurp, Anecdotal Evidence
PRAISE FOR MARIUS KOCIEJOWSKI
“Kociejowski draws on all the aspects of his life in these engaging, idiosyncratic personal essays … [that] proffer the reader equal measures of autobiography, insight and quirky charm.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Here the charm is deep, the splendour unlaboured; the colours of history, reckoned afresh, saturate singular people, in whom passion is lucid again…here is one who collects his extraordinary resources, and strides.”—Christopher Middleton
“It is a testament to the power of this superb book that I felt not despondency, but … elation.”
—Adam Thorpe, The Times Literary Supplement
“Treasures are revealed … with a formidable erudition, and at their best they gleam with an enameled splendour.”
—Ken Babstock, The Globe and Mail
“Kociejowski writes beautifully … unusual, poetic, and thought-provoking.”—Library Journal
