In 2017, Joanna Rzadkowska walks the close to eight hundred kilometre route from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. It is autumn and the trip passes through shimmering blue mountain chains and tiny villages where the local delicacy is octopus, via magnificent cathedrals and small inns with guitar-playing nuns.
Through her conversations with her fellow travellers, she approaches the questions: Who is the modern pilgrim? Why set out on a pilgrimage in our days?
Along the way, she tries to come to terms with her own inadequacy and the fact that all lives involve doubt. The books she reads direct her thoughts towards themes linked to faith and metaphysics.
She did the same pilgrimage before, ten years earlier, and knows that it will be different this time. Even so, surprises await her.
Exemplary literary pilgrimage. Joanna Rzadkowska intertwines the inner and outer landscapes in this existential travelogue from the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela.
VÅRT LAND
Rzadkowska delivers a beautiful, truthful and complicated chronicle to her readers – without vanity, bragging or theatrics. The poet is making her way towards ancient and solid truths. The poet, translator and wanderer Joanna Rzadkowska is without a doubt heading in the right direction, and we are sincerely looking forward to what is more to come.
MORGENBLADET
To the top