“Come una fattoria nella steppa”. La Podlachia mitica di Andrzej Stasiuk

The aim of this article is to shed light on the role of Podlasie in Andrzej Stasiuk’s latest prose, especially in texts such as Fado, Grochów and Wschód. After a brief excursus examining what issues are raised in relation to this region in contemporary Polish prose, the analysis sheds light on the values attributed to Podlasie and the way it is represented by Stasiuk. I shall argue that it is thematised accordingly to commonly shared meanings attached to the region and constitutes the final step of the author’s shaping of “imaginary geographies”, which acquires in Stasiuk’s poetics a precise connotation as both a place of remembrance and a symbolic, constructed image of the Orient.