Travelling Companions

‘Antoni Jach takes one of the oldest of
storytelling forms, the traveller who shares with us the tales of other
travellers, and makes new magic from it. Travelling Companions is
a joy from start to finish.’

JOHN
CONNOLLY, author of he: A Novel and the Charlie Parker
series

Solitary travellers and a couple
encounter Nina, an eloquent storyteller, on their travels through Spain, France
and Italy. She entrances them all with her tales, which prompts her fellow
travelling companions to share their own stories.

A handsome young man from Staten
Island, who believes that life forms exist in other galaxies, vows to never
work in an office again and travels by container ship to a commune in Italy. A
lonely postal worker from Łódź takes home and reads the most interesting love
letters, often becoming convinced a relationship needs his intervention, before
delivering them the next day. A woman named Pauline calls herself Kim because
her surname is Nowak. Depressed about turning forty, she mysteriously
disappears from her own birthday party. Told by people on a journey, these are
stories – rich with unexpected wisdoms – of lives in transit.

Travelling Companions is charming, amusing and philosophical
– a wholly original exploration of what it means to honour our
strangest dreams and disappointments. It is both a confrontation with,
and a sweet diversion from, these, the darkest of times.

‘In the tradition of Boccaccio and Chaucer, Jach is an
extraordinarily inventive fabulist for late capitalism, seducing his
reader into an ever-expansive web of captivating and often hilarious
stories from likely – and unlikely – travelling companions.’

Marion May Campbell, author of Shadow Thief and Konkretion