Description: "In a Polish village, a young man watches an old man trip and fall down a flight of stairs. From this singular event arises a cascade of memories, regrets, and longings--the buried sensations of a whole lifetime, condensed and released"--
Review Quotes: "Like Anjet Daanje's The Remembered Soldier or Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, Wieslaw Myśliwski's narrator reminiscing is triggered by trauma. Old age revives the need to bring closure to his unfulfilled first love and sends him into a dizzying pollarding of memory that turns Needle's Eye into a masterful phenomenology of introspection." --Alice Catherine Carl, World Literature Today
"History and personal experience converge in this evocative, layered exploration of the workings of memory--both collective and individual." --Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times' "Best books of 2025" "Myśliwski's reluctance to name his protagonists creates an omniscient, impersonal narrative that sweeps readers along, at times uncertain of the who or the when, but savoring the flurry of memories . . . Timelines are layered like an Escher painting, linking beginnings and ends, expressing both the unity and continuity of nature." --Brock Covington, The Active Mind "The labyrinthine latest by Myśliwski reckons with mortality and Polish history . . . Unfolding in an eloquent and slow-moving monologue, the novel sustains an intimate mood . . . Fans of modernist fiction will find much to admire." --Publishers Weekly