Tracing the Path of Self-Identity
Reviewed:
by Wiesław Myśliwski
Translated by Bill Johnston
Archipelago Books, 424 pp., $25 (paper)
Publication Date: 10/21/25
As we age, the innumerable gradations of our identity become blurred, dissolving the notion of a clear beginning and end; instead, our lives resemble a raging current of memories, reflections, and regrets. Polish novelist Wiesław Myśliwski captures this elusive sensation in Needle’s Eye, eloquently translated by Bill Johnston. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, Myśliwski’s protean narrative follows the varied experiences of a medieval historian through childhood, war, and complex emotional entanglements.
“Long ago or not, if you’re in love you keep waiting.”
The story opens with a heartfelt exchange between an elderly man and a presumably younger narrator as they pass each other on a stairway leading to an old, wild green valley, when suddenly the old man falls and perishes during his descent. In an inversion of linear storytelling, this death marks the beginning of a series of reflections told through the lens of an amorphous narrator, who drifts in a continual, saccharine conversation with various interlocutors. We follow him laboring in a canning factory, living in a former Jewish ghetto, welcoming desperate travelers, fleeing an advancing warfront, and toiling over a lost love that slipped away.
The narrative stream flows with a levity that blends both related and unrelated vignettes seamlessly. Myśliwski’s reluctance to name his protagonists creates an omniscient, impersonal narrative that sweeps readers along, unsure of the who or the when but savoring the flurry of memories in one spoonful. Timelines are layered like an Escher painting, linking beginnings and ends, expressing both the unity and continuity of nature:
“Alas, by its very nature the beginning is unseizable, you might say imperceptible, so who knows if the end doesn’t constitute the beginning.”
Much of the novel rests on the laurels of Myśliwski’s prose rather than on any concrete, traceable storyline to be pieced together. The two central pursuits of the novel—the old, wild green valley and his unrequited love—both resemble Kafka’s infamous symbol of the castle, with their enchanting promise and elusive, abstract reality—or unreality. Myśliwski almost brackets time and subjectivity from the story, allowing us to appreciate both the nuances and the aggregate of a lifetime of sensations—those created, inherited, and borrowed from the people we cross paths with:
“And when memory sometimes took me back to it, I was never sure if it was my own memory. Especially because, as we know, every memory is composed of the memories of others and it’s not possible to distinguish what’s ours from what’s borrowed or inherited. I have doubts, then, whether memory can be a guarantor of our identity.”
Despite its Polish depictions and war-torn setting, Needle’s Eye serves as a universal guide to human experience. With wit and evocative storytelling, Myśliwski provides readers with a framework for meditating on life’s impressions and the significance of memory.
