Within, Without - by Ilya Kaminsky & Piotr Florczyk (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Brings together two intimate, reflective essays by two acclaimed poets, Ilya Kaminsky and Piotr Florczyck, as they revisit their hometowns of Odesa and Kraków, exploring the complexities of return, memory, and identity.

Within, Without: On Two Cities presents two essays by Eastern European-born poets and translators, Ilya Kaminsky and Piotr Florczyk, now based in the United States. Revisiting their respective hometowns--Odesa and Kraków--they grapple with questions of history, identity, and belonging. What does it mean for an immigrant or refugee to return? Can one ever truly go back to a homeland that has since been transformed? Kaminsky and Florczyk chart a path forward by embracing the complexities of their transnational and translingual identities, as artists and as human beings.

Review Quotes

"'You can't go home again, ' is the refrain in the two essays in Within, Without: On Two Cities (Seagull Books, £13.99; Tablet price £12.59). In 'There, There', Piotr Florczyk's Kraków is not the Unesco World Heritage city of tourists eyeing up Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, but the adjacent workers' district Nowa Huta, now teeming with young families and trendy creatives, a development viewed with mixed feelings. In 'Silent City', Ilya Kaminsky's Odesa is a precarious affair, his foundling father, a wartime survivor, passing his savvy on to his deaf son, his formidable mother fiercely shielding him from everyday cruelty and stupidity: 'Deafness is a theatre. Here the deaf person is the audience. Everyone else is an actor.' Talent thinks, genius sees."

-- "The Tablet"

About the Author

Ilya Kaminsky is a poet, essayist, and translator who is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa, among other books. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and teaches at Princeton University. Piotr Florczyk is a poet, essayist, translator, and critic working in English and in Polish. He teaches global literary studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and lives with his family in Los Angeles.