Book picks similar to
Slavic Excursions: Essays on Russian and Polish Literature by Donald Davie
russian-polish
russian-ukrainian-polish
slav
0001-werewolfmachine
Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe
Rory MacLean - 2020
In that euphoric year Rory MacLean travelled from Berlin to Moscow, exploring lands that were - for most Brits and Americans - part of the forgotten half of Europe. Thirty years on, MacLean traces his original journey backwards, across countries confronting old ghosts and new fears: from revanchist Russia, through Ukraine's bloodlands, into illiberal Hungary, and then Poland, Germany and the UK. Along the way he shoulders an AK-47 to go hunting with Moscow's chicken Tsar, plays video games in St Petersburg with a cyber-hacker who cracked the US election, drops by the Che Guevara High School of Political Leadership in a non-existent nowhereland and meets the Warsaw doctor who tried to stop a march of 70,000 nationalists. Finally, on the shores of Lake Geneva, he waits patiently to chat with Mikhail Gorbachev.As Europe sleepwalks into a perilous new age, MacLean explores how opportunists - both within and outside of Russia, from Putin to Home Counties populists - have made a joke of truth, exploiting refugees and the dispossessed, and examines the veracity of historical narrative from reportage to fiction and fake news. He asks what happened to the optimism of 1989 and, in the shadow of Brexit, chronicles the collapse of the European dream.
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1863
Many commentators believe that in the themes it explores, the essay anticipates his later work Notes from the Underground.In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major cities, including Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan, and Vienna. He recorded his impressions in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, which were first published in the February 1863 issue of Vremya (Time), the periodical of which he was the editor.Among other themes, Dostoevsky reveals his Pan-Slavism, rejecting European culture as corrupt and exhorting Russians to resist the temptation to emulate or adopt European ways of life.
Under Western Eyes
Joseph Conrad - 1911
Increasingly enmeshed in the radical's political intrigue, he betrays the anarchist who had placed blind faith in him. The authorities then dispatch Razumov on a mission to spy on the revolutionary's sister and mother.A fascinating character study, Under Western Eyes hauntingly reveals Razumov's preoccupation with questions of decency and accountability when confronted by the equally powerful truths and values of human integrity and moral strength.
Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers
Ilya Ilf - 1936
They drove cross-country and back on a ten-week trip, recording images of American life through humerous texts and the lens of a Leica camera. When they returned home, they published their work in Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Time magazine, and later in the book Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Single-Storied America). This wonderful lost workfilled with wry observations, biting opinions, and telling photographsis now collected in Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip, the first English translation.From Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip:"The word 'America' has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person, for whom it refers to a country of skyscrapers, where day and night one hears the unceasing thunder of surface and underground trains, the hellish roar of automobile horns, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. We want to change that image."A Cabinet Book published by Princeton Architectural Press
If Not Now, When?
Primo Levi - 1982
In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive, and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi's characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside THE PERIOD TABLE and IF THIS IS A MAN as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of the 20th century.
The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire
Peter Englund - 1988
In 1700, the Tsar combined with Denmark, Saxony, and Poland to attack Swedish hegemony in the North. When the forces finally defeated King Charles XII of Sweden in 1708 at Poltava, in the Ukraine, it proved the turning-point of the Great Northern War, heralding the collapse of the Swedish Empire and the rise of Russia, the effects of which would be felt for almost three hundred years. Swedish historian Peter Englund’s vivid account of the three violent days of battle is an internationally acclaimed classic of military history.
The Art of Description: World into Word
Mark Doty - 2010
"But try to find words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf, or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning, or the very beginnings of desire stirring in the gaze of someone looking right into your eyes . . ." Doty finds refuge in the sensory experience found in poems by Blake, Whitman, Bishop, and others. The Art of Description is an invaluable book by one of America's most revered writers and teachers.
Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews
Eva Hoffman - 1997
With understanding and sensitivity, Shtetl limns the culture that influenced Christian villagers' decisions to conceal or betray Jewish neighbors when the Nazis invaded. A New York Times Notable Book.
Red Metal
Mark Greaney - 2019
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series comes a startlingly realistic novel of World War III.A desperate Kremlin takes advantage of a military crisis in Asia to simultaneously strike into Western Europe and invade east Africa in a bid to occupy three Rare Earth mineral mines that will give Russia unprecedented control for generations over the world's hi-tech sector. Pitted against the Russians are a Marine lieutenant colonel pulled out of a cushy job at the Pentagon and thrown into the fray in Africa, a French Special Forces captain and his intelligence operative father, a young Polish female partisan fighter, an A-10 Warthog pilot, and the captain of an American tank platoon who, along with a German sergeant, fight from behind enemy lines in Germany all the way into Russia.From a daring MiG attack on American satellites, through land and air battles in all theaters, naval battles in the Arabian sea, and small unit fighting down to the hand-to-hand level in the jungle, Russia's forces battle to either take the mines or detonate a nuclear device to prevent the West from exploiting them.
The Sum of My Parts
James Sanford - 2011
At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.
Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army
Evgeni Bessonov - 2005
From then on the Germans were forced into a long, bitter retreat that ended in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. An officer in an elite guards unit of the Red Army, Bessonov rode tanks from Kursk, through a western Russia and Poland devastated by the Germans, and right into the heart of Nazi Germany.Tank Rider is the riveting memoir of Evgeni Bessonov telling of his years of service at the vanguard of the Red Army and daily encounters with the German foe. He brings large-scale battles to life, recounts the sniping and skirmishing that tried and tested soldiers on both sides, and narrates the overwhelming tragedy and horror of apocalyptic warfare on the Eastern Front.So much of the Soviet experience of World War II remains untold, but this memoir provides an important glimpse into some of the most decisive moments of this overlooked history.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
And I Am Afraid Of My Dreams
Wanda Półtawska - 1961
She was nineteen years old. Charged with aiding and abetting the resistance movement a heinous crime in Nazi-occupied Poland she was sent to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp. And I Am Afraid of My Dreams is Połtawska's account of the four years spent in the camp, where the prospect of death, whether from starvation, exhaustion, or summary execution, was a daily reality. Wanda was used as one of the camps guinea pigs and became a victim of cruel medical experimentation by Nazi doctors. Many of her friends died or were left with horrific physical and psychological injuries as a result of these experiments. Wanda bravely faced each day and pledged to become a doctor if she ever got out alive. Originally written nearly fifty years ago, this powerful story is an enduring testament to the courage of the human spirit.
More Salt Than Pepper
Karan Thapar - 2009
This book is a selection of the best columns written by him over the last eleven years.The columns range from the author's perceptive portraits of politicians and celebrities to his reflections on the state of the media and the peculiarities of the English language. He also turns the gaze on himself—sharing with us his eccentricities, his foibles and anecdotes about himself and his family, including his late wife Nisha. There are also pieces here about his Doon and Cambridge days and vignettes from his travels to cities near and far.
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt - 1951
Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.
Hostage To War: A True Story
Tatjana Wassiljewa - 1994
In this remarkable memoir, based on her diary entries, she tells about surviving German bomb attacks and near starvation only to wind up a captive laborer, one of seven million prisoners forced to work in German farms and factories. There, despite constant hunger and backbreaking work, she managed to find friendship and even first love. Readers will be moved by Tatjana's resilience, courage, and persistent faith in humanity during the little-known struggle of Russian civilians during World War II.