The Palimpsests

The Palimpsests, originally written in Spanish by Polish newcomer Aleksandra Lun, is a satirical novel about immigration, senses of cultural belonging, and ownership of language: complicated and simple, adopted and native. The book opens with the protagonist, Przesnicki, an Eastern-European immigrant writer, languishing in a Belgian asylum while undergoing "Bartlebian therapy" meant to strip away his knowledge of any language that is not Polish, his native tongue. Przesnicki recalls his former life of long Soviet toilet paper lines, the loss of his lover Ernest Hemingway following a passionate affair, and the beatings of the territorial Antarctic literary community for his forays into novel-writing in their language. The story is filled with darkly comic cameos from famous writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and of course, Przesnicki's former lover Ernest Hemingway; it is the perfect book for lovers of language and cultural translation in the modern day.