The Thistles of the Baragan
Panait Istrati author Jacques Le Clercq translator Natalia Suvorova illustrator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Thousand Horsemen Press
Published:29th Oct '26
Should be back in stock very soon
Ranked along with Maxim Gorky, Jack London, and John Steinbeck; Panait Istrati is in English once again with his masterful modern classic.
The Thistles of the Baragan is the tragic but intensely vibrant story of Matake and his lust for life, despite all its sharp edges. Leaving his pure heart behind with his mother, this young boy joins his father on a journey in pursuit of a better life for the family. We witness, through Matake's voice and eyes, their trials and tribulations, scenes that hit too close to home-of injustice, ruthlessness, and a peasantry caught in the grasp of a poverty so absolute that even the thought of a single bite from a stale bread drives them to violence. Nevertheless, they chase the thistles with childish glee. In the world Istrati paints for them with all his poeticism and descriptive might, the real sorrow lies in being left behind while life flows.
A true ode to humanity and resilience, The Thistles of the Baragan brings the reader face to face with the spiked beauty that is living-a beauty that never simply arrives to those who just remain, waiting.
“Panait Istrati was, above all, a free spirit. Throughout his life, he exercised his freedom as an art. His belief is one of serving truth and only the truth. Achieving literary greatness was never his goal, but that he might serve, through the written word, human dignity.”
—Mircea Cărtărescu
“Panait Istrati is a natural-born storyteller, an Oriental one, and once he launches into a story, no one knows, not even himself, whether it will last
an hour or a thousand and one nights… His genius for storytelling is irresistible.”
—Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature
ISBN: 9781068209772
Dimensions: 197mm x 128mm x 8mm
Weight: 120g
120 pages
2nd Revised edition