Summary of White RavenÂ
A group of friends travel to the Beskid Mountains in southern Poland for a winter walking expedition and to seek purpose in their lives. Instead, they end up drinking too much, and after an accidental death, the events spiral out of control, leading them to flee from the police.
Reasons to read White RavenÂ
“White Raven” is more than just an adventure tale about men trying to escape midlife realities in the mountains. It delves into deeper themes of coping with maturity and responsibilities in life. The novel is an allegory for post-communist Poland in the early 1990s, where people gained freedom but lost a sense of direction. Andrzej Stasiuk is a Polish writer, most renowned for his travel books such as “On the Road to Babadag” and “Fado”. He received several prestigious awards, including the Nike Award in 2005 and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2016.
Setting: Carpathians (Poland)
Novel set in Poland: Beskid Mountains, a mountain range in the Carpathians, located in the south of Poland near the borders with Slovakia and Ukraine.
Original title: Biały kruk
Year of publication: 1998
Nr of pages: 256
