A Part and the Whole
by Daniel Karpinski

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Over the English Channel, on a cliff in Sussex known as a popular suicide site, a person was found later identified as Paul, a Canadian born in Poland. Paul is alive, but he does not remember anything, he does not know who he is and who he was. He does not even know if he is Paul or someone else entirely. Loss of memory is associated with the loss of identity, social position, awareness of belonging to a specific culture, nation, even sexual orientation. After the accident, Paul undergoes many years of treatment. Is it recovering its memory or constructing a new one? Paul tries to understand who he is and what mystery his memory hides. Years later, his memory reconstructs the day Paul arrived in London and read the Princess Diana Spencer Accident Report. On the same day, Paul is entangled in a breakneck attempt to reveal “the mystery” of Princess Diana's death. A desire for profit, an obsession with solving puzzles or a midlife crisis lead Paul to a catastrophe. After a few days, his body is found over the English Channel, on a cliff in Sussex. A Fragment and the Whole is a crime novel revolving around one of the great secrets of the twentieth century and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. It is also a text about breakthroughs in neuroscience and the latest research on the subject. The author has assembled a team of medical consultants who have collaborated on the text and verified its scientific legitimacy. A Fragment and the Whole is a metaphorical story of memory loss as denial. It is also a novel about aging, approaching death, and grappling with mortality. The text is written from the perspective of an aging man and is a study in masculinity at the turn of the twenty-first century.

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Daniel is the author of I jak inni (O Like the Others or A like Another) (WL, 1998), and Fikcja (Fiction) (WL, 2000), which were both nominated for the Nike Literary Award, the most prestigious Polish book prize. An audiobook of “I jak Inni” is an official promotional material for Tarnów, the city described in “I jak Inni”. He is the winner of the radio broadcasting contest. His The Fourth Person of Drama premiered at the Cracow Broadcasting Station in 1984. His story, “Junk," was published in The Outreach in Toronto in 1994. His novel, Yad, was published by FriesenPress in 2018 and has received second place in fiction category at Paris Book Festival ion 2019 (polish version, Jad, was published by Novae Res, 2018 and was nominated to Angelus Award). He was born in Tarnow, Poland. After a PhD in architecture, he moved to West Berlin. Since 1989, he has lived with his family in Toronto, where he writes, designs, and teaches architecture.

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Daniel Karpinski

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