Best of
Poland

2005

Monologue of a Dog


Wisława Szymborska - 2005
    Szymborska writes with verve about everything from love unremembered to keys mislaid in the grass. The poems will appear, for the first time, side by side with the Polish originals, in a book to delight new and old readers alike.EVERYTHINGEverything-a bumptious, stuck-up word.It should be written in quotes.It pretends to miss nothing,to gather, hold, contain, and have.While all the while it's justa shred of a gale.

Winter Journey


Diane Armstrong - 2005
    A mother's silence, a village with a terrible secret, and an Australian woman who travels to Poland to uncover the truth ... When forensic dentist Halina Shore arrives in Nowa Kalwaria to take part in a war crimes investigation, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. What she does not realise is that she has also embarked on a confronting personal journey. Inspired by a true incident that took place in Poland in 1941, Diane Armstrong's powerful novel is part mystery, part forensic investigation, and a moving and confronting story of love, loss and sacrifice. 'A deeply moving and inspiring novel' GOOD READING 'A bold adventure of a novel ... Here is a consummate writer at the top of her form. A fine fictional debut from a writer who's already made her mark' CANBERRA TIMES 'Profoundly moving, compelling and superbly written' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY

Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine


Timothy Snyder - 2005
    In a Europe remade by the First World War, his talents led him to different roles—intelligence operative, powerful statesman, underground activist, lifelong conspirator. Henryk Józewski directed Polish intelligence in Ukraine, governed the borderland region of Volhynia in the interwar years, worked in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet underground during the Second World War, and conspired against Poland’s Stalinists until his arrest in 1953. His personal story, important in its own right, sheds new light on the foundations of Soviet power and on the ideals of those who resisted it. By following the arc of Józewski’s life, this book demonstrates that his tolerant policies toward Ukrainians in Volhynia were part of Poland’s plans to roll back the communist threat.The book mines archival materials, many available only since the fall of communism, to rescue Józewski, his Polish milieu, and his Ukrainian dream from oblivion. An epilogue connects his legacy to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the democratic revolution in Ukraine in 2004.

The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square


Joseph Ziemian - 2005
    Sentenced to death, hounded at every step, they kept themselves alive by peddling cigarettes in Warsaw's Three Crosses Square - where the author, a member of the Jewish Underground in Poland, met and helped them and recorded their story. Several of the children were finally caught and killed, but most survived and are alive today. The story of the cigarette sellers has been published in Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and a dramatised version has been broadcast in Israel. The book was awarded a literary prize by the World Jewish Congress in New York.

Guarded by Angels: How My Father and Uncle Survived Hitler and Cheated Stalin


Alan Elsner - 2005
    When they reached Lvov, in the Soviet zone of Poland, they were arrested and deported to the Gulag where they faced unimaginable hardship under arctic conditions. After Germany invaded Russia, they were released to join a new Polish army fighting the Germans.Their description of the odyssey through Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara on the way to join up with the Poles, a journey which took them through the Soviet heartland, allows the reader to see what life was like there during wartime. Through it all, the brothers schemed and struggled to stay together, using guile and wits. Gene even became a translator for the occupying German army; of course, they didn’t know he was a Jew.No matter what he witnessed, he had to stay focused on keeping himself and his brother alive. Not only does this memoir provide historical insight into the Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, it personifies the Jewish will to resist as Gene made contact with the resistance and was able to aid them. It is also as much a story about family and brotherhood as it is about the cruelty of two regimes—fascist and communist.After the war, the two brothers settled in Israel, side by side. Henek, from whom they had become separated, survived, sheltered by a Polish Christian woman whom he later married.

Trans Terra: Towards a Cartoon Philosophy


Tom Kaczynski - 2005
    The author's journey begins in the frigid wastelands of contemporary consumer culture. Like a surreal HMS Beagle, Trans Terra meanders through time and space exploring archipelagos real and imagined. Prominent stops include Soviet Siberia, Communist Poland, Plato's Atlantis, nineteenth-century New York, and Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Arriving on the polluted shores of collapsing global civilization, Tom K glimpses the faint light of utopia beyond the veil of Apocalypse. Taking cue from Salvador Dali's paranoiac-critical method, the author unearths improbable connections between thinkers as disparate as Ignatious Donnelly, Alvin Toffler, Rem Koolhaas, Slavoj Žižek, and many others. Translated into several languages, Trans Terra is a comic book manifesto for the post-capitalist-crisis world.Tom Kaczynski (a.k.a. Tom K) is an Ignatz-nominated cartoonist, designer, illustrator, writer, teacher, and publisher. His comics have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, Mome, Punk Planet, The Drama, and many other publications. Beta Testing the Apocalypse, a collection of his Mome stories, was published by Fantagraphics Books in July 2012. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his partner Nikki and their two black cats.

The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe


David Ost - 2005
    And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive communist regime gave way to a capitalist society that embraced economic and political inequality, leaving many workers frustrated and angry. Their leaders first ignored them, then began to fear them, and finally tried to marginalize them. In turn, workers rejected their liberal leaders, opening the way for right-wing nationalists to take control of Solidarity.Ost tells a fascinating story about the evolution of postcommunist society in Eastern Europe. Informed by years of fieldwork in Polish factory towns, scores of interviews with workers, labor activists, and politicians, and an exhaustive reading of primary sources, his new book gives voice to those who have not been heard. But even more, Ost proposes a novel theory about the role of anger in politics to show why such voices matter, and how they profoundly affect political outcomes. Drawing on Poland's experiences, Ost describes lessons relevant to democratization throughout Eastern Europe and to democratic theory in general.

East of Time


Jacob G. Rosenberg - 2005
    It unfolds in a succession of reminiscences that weave together a shimmering tapestry depicting a lost world. The setting is Lodz, Poland, in the years between the author's childhood and early maturity, a period overtaken by the cataclysmic events of the 1930s and early 1940s. The narrative approach presents a powerful personal testament and reflects the determination of an entire community to remain human in the face of its greatest peril, even at the last frontier of life.East of Time received the 2006 New South Wales Premier's Award for the Best Book of Non-Fiction and was short-listed for the 2006 Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal and the South Australia Arts Festival Award for Innovation in Literature.

Legends of Modernity: Essays and Letters from Occupied Poland, 1942-1943


Czesław Miłosz - 2005
    Why did the European spirit succumb to such a devastating fiasco? the young Milosz asks. Half a century later, when Legends of Modernity saw its first publication in Poland, Milosz said: If everything inside you is agitation, hatred, and despair, write measured, perfectly calm sentences... While the essays here reflect a perfect calm, the accompanying contemporaneous exchange of letters between Milosz and Jerzy Andrzejewski express the raw emotions of agitation, hatred and despair experienced by these two close friends struggling to understand the proximate causes of this debacle of western civilization, and the relevance, if any, of the teachings of the Catholic church. Passionate, poignant, and compelling, Legends of Modernity is a deeply moving insight into the mind and emotions of one of the greatest writers of our time.

Making Music in the Polish Tatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Mountain Musicians


Timothy J. Cooley - 2005
    Cooley shows that intensive contact with tourists and their more academic kin, ethnographers, since the late 19th century helped shape both the ethnic group known as Górale (highlanders) and the music that they perform. Making Music in the Polish Tatras reveals how the historically related practices of tourism and ethnography actually created the very objects of tourist and ethnographic interest in what has become the popular resort region of Zakopane. This lively book introduces readers to Górale musicians, their present-day lives and music making, and how they navigate a regional mountain-defined identity while participating in global music culture. Vivid descriptions of musical performances at weddings, funerals, and festivals and the collaboration of Górale fiddlers with the Jamaican reggae group Twinkle Brothers are framed by discussions of currently influential theories relating to identity and ethnicity and to anthropological and sociological studies of ritual, tourism, festivals, globalism, and globalization. The book includes a 46-track CD illustrating the rich variety of Górale music, including examples of its fusion with Jamaican reggae.

The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After


Marek Jan Chodakiewicz - 2005
    The publisher's description of the book follows:"On July 10, 1941, the Jewish inhabitants in the small Polish town of Jedwabne were massacred by German policemen and some Polish townsmen and peasants. Chodakiewicz provides us with a criminal investigation of this mass murder. In this detailed study of a small area in Poland, Chodakiewicz examines the conditions that led to the heinous slaughter of Jedwabne's Jewish population.A dominant interpretation of this event depicts the Germans as the perpetrators of the crime while the Poles looked on. An alternative version suggests that the Germans plotted the crime, while the Poles executed the slaughter. The author argues that these two competing theses are not supported by the available evidence. Despite the limitation of sources, Chodakiewicz emphasizes a comprehensive methodology using all available documents, testimonies, oral recollections, and forensic and other physical evidence to reconstruct the history.In addition, Chodakiewicz provides an alternative interpretation to the dominant paradigms concerning Jewish-Polish relations in general and the mass murder in Jedwabne in particular." Professor Chodakiewicz is a Professor of History at The Institute of World Politics.Source (21st September 2015):http://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/...Description in Polish (21st September 2015):http://xlm.pl/ksiazka/mord-w-jedwabne...