Dom ojców

Sometimes you have to go right around the world to find your own home. Andrzej Muszyński  provides the perfect example. He started his career as a travel writer with reportage about Asia and Africa, but more recently he has focused on his immediate vicinity. Thus in his new book, My Fathers’ House, he combines the genres of diary, essay and reportage to write about himself and his own life. Now aged thirty-eight, he begins with his decision to buy a piece of land near where his family is from, in a village outside Kraków. He sowed his field and started to lead the life of a farmer, on the model of his ancestors. “I can’t see any point in working outside art and agriculture,” he writes in the first chapter, “so I wanted to earn the money to write by working the land. I was hoping this would protect me from having to go to an office and having to wear a suit, and that true freedom lay ahead of me, under the turf.” He would soon tot up many a hard clash with reality.

The first part of My Fathers’ House chronicles Muszyński’s efforts to become a farmer. He wants to work the land ecologically, without using pesticides or chemicals, but in practice it proves extremely difficult. He spends hours reading up on internet forums and social media groups for farmers, and asks Google every possible question. Nevertheless, his best source of information are the neighbours with whom he forms close friendships. They give him the most effective advice on how to plough, sow and reap.

And yet the “sorrows of a young farmer” are just the beginning. Further on, Muszyński broadens his perspective and starts to examine the earth with the help of some archaeological and geological tools. His thoughts on the quality of the soil lead him to the layer of prehistoric fossils that lies beneath the surrounding hills. He imagines the everyday life of his early ancestors, and considers the future effects of climate change. He asks from every possible angle what it means to be rooted. Will his children leave here, or will they stay? Questions that people ask themselves in many places, not just in the countryside near Kraków.