Together with Insignis publishing house, we invite you on Monday, September 29th at 6:00 PM to a meeting centered around the novel "O" by Miki Liukkonen. The conversation with the translator, Sebastian Musielak, will be moderated by Marcin Bełza. 📖 About the book: The full title of the novel, "O (or a universal treatise on why things are the way they are and not otherwise)," suggests that Miki Liukkonen's work is his literary attempt to "explain everything." And indeed, it is. Over 960 pages (in the Polish edition), Liukkonen describes 7 days during which the lives of 100 characters unfold. In "O," we read, among other things, about a swimming team preparing for the Olympics, a company designing artistic children's slides, and a man escaping his neurosis to his garden shed. About Roma horse traders who, thanks to a spacetime tunnel, are two hours ahead of earthly time, about life-threatening experiments conducted by Johann Sebastian Bach fanatics, about a shy, withdrawn boy who communicates with the world using sticky notes, and about a drug addict living under a boat in Spain who admires a sky through a hole in its overturned hull that we have never seen in our wildest dreams, and about a multitude of other characters and events (including Einstein and Tesla). But above all, "O" is a monumental story about what everyday life is in our world and how to live within it. 📚 Sebastian Musielak: Sebastian Musielak – born in 1970, translator of Finnish and English-language literature, graduate of Finnish philology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He worked as an interpreter in a bus factory in Wrocław and the Aker Yards shipyard in Helsinki. For a quarter of a century, he has been translating literature for Poland's top publishers, and is the author of translations of novels by Leena Lehtolainen, Sofi Oksanen, Mika Waltari, Tommi Kinnunen, Leena Krohn, Arto Paasilinna, Laura Lindstedt, Pajtim Statovci, and Miki Liukkonen, among others. A member of the Association of Literary Translators, mentor, and teacher of translation, he conducts an international course for beginner Finnish literature translators every two years in Helsinki, organized by FILI (Finnish Literature Exchange) and the Finnish Department of Education. In 2008, he won the "Literature in the World" magazine award in the "New Voice" category for his translation of the novel "The Colonel's Wife" by Finnish writer Daniel Katz. In 2017, he received the Finnish State Award for translating Finnish literature into a foreign language. In 2023, the European Science Fiction Association honored him with an entry into its Hall of Fame for his translation of "Fishing for the Little Pike" by Finnish writer Juhani Karila, for which he was also nominated for the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award in the same year. In 2025, he received the Knight's Cross of the Order of the White Rose of Finland, awarded by the President of Finland. 🎤 Marcin Bełza: Marcin Bełza – historian by education, literary critic. Collaborator of "Mały Format," also publishes in "Tygodnik Powszechny," "Mint Magazine," and "Kultura Liberalna." Quarrelsome and stubborn. Persistently believes in fiction. 🎸 Miki Liukkonen: Miki Liukkonen (1989-2023) – Finnish writer, poet, and musician considered one of the most talented creators of his generation, author of five novels, guitarist, and composer of the alternative rock band The Scenes, whose novel "O" is regarded as a breakthrough in Finnish fiction and the most talked-about literary tour de force of recent years. 📅 See you: September 29th, 6:00 PM 📍 Czarnego Bookstore, al. Jana Pawła II 45a/56 (entrance from Nowolipki Street)
