A history of Poland and its neighbours that covers the Silver Age, during which the Commonwealth was ruled by elective kings, a Frenchman and a Hungarian, then by the Swedish House of Vasa.

    The crew, however, isn’t content to sit out the war. With help from unexpected sources—a naval attaché with the British Embassy and a courageous American reporter and her photographer sidekick—they overcome their captors, regain control of the "Eagle," and escape. The German’s are convinced the "Eagle's" crew has no stomach for a fight and will seek refuge in Sweden. But the Poles have something else in mind—join up with the British Fleet and continue fighting against their homeland's Nazi conquerors. They face stiff odds. The "Eagle" has little food and water, few torpedoes, and no sea charts. And before she can rendezvous with the British somewhere in the North Sea, she must traverse the Baltic, which has become little more than a Nazi-controlled lake. This story is inspired by the exploits of the Polish submarine, "Orzel," during the early weeks of World War II. Winston Churchill called her escape from the Nazis “an epic.”

    An attractive 29-year-old Polish woman suddenly appears before a New York Jewish family in 1967, claiming to be a long-lost child who was hidden in Poland during World War II."Told without artifice or irony, Mekler's story of inter generational immigration is a cooly composed novel. By the time ending veers... Mekler has already transcended plot in favor of uncompromising examination." -The New York Times Book Review "Stunning... well crafted... adding depth and resonance to a gripping read. Not to be missed by anyone who loves a tale well told."-Library Journal"Vividly drawn character,both major and minor... The tale itself is compelling, combining romance and mystery and reminding us of the difficulty of unearthing personal truths when one of history's great cataclysms has buried them."-The Wall Street Journal"Takes a less-traveled road [from other Holocaust literature] and explores the loss of identity... Strongly evoked... the understated and moving story of a woman whose memories open so many old wounds."-Philadelphia Inquirer

    Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank--a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day--is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries--those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is--The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.

    Trąba, a failed Lutheran clergyman, alcoholic, would-be Polish insurrectionist, and one of the wildest literary characters since Sterne’s Uncle Toby. One drunken afternoon, Mr. Trąba and the narrator’s nameless father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity: travel to distant Warsaw and assassinate the de facto Polish head of state, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, Władysław Gomułka—assassinating Mao Tse-tung, after all, would be impractical. And they decide to involve Jerzyk in their scheme . . .

    Visit Krakow's stunning Main Market Square, Warsaw's historical Royal Way, or Gdansk's Main Town Hall, featuring Golden Age decorations. You'll get firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.

    But this case changes everything. Because of it he meets Monika Grzelka, a young journalist whose charms prove difficult to resist, and he discovers the frightening power of certain esoteric therapeutic methods. The shocking videos of the sessions lead him to an array of possible scenarios. Could one of the patients have become so absorbed by his therapy role-playing that he murdered Telak? Szacki’s investigation leads him to an earlier murder, before the fall of Communism.And why is the Secret Police suddenly taking an interest in all this? As Szacki uncovers each piece of the puzzle, facts emerge that he’d be better off not knowing, for his own safety.

    But it was months, even years, before the mass graves started to yield up their dead and the process of identification, burial, and mourning could begin. Here we travel through the ravaged postwar landscape in the company of a few survivors (mostly women) as they visit the scenes of their loss: a hall where victims' clothing is displayed; an underground cave littered with pale jumbles of bones; a camp for homeless refugees; a city now abandoned to the ghosts of painful memories; a funeral service where a family can finally say goodbye. These encounters are snapshots and memorials, a feat of powerful reportage told from the viewpoint of people who have lost nearly everything. With the sensibility of Philip Gourevitch or Ryszard Kapuscinski, Tochman captures a painful moment in history, as an entire community comes to terms with its raw and recent past.

    Communists, socialists, and nationalists; thieves and black marketeers; servants and fading aristocrats; veteran terrorists and bands of murderous children bewitched by the lure of crime and adventure--all of these converge on a provincial town's chief hotel, a microcosm of an uprooted world.

    A tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time doing little more than searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the Polish economy, Nails ricochets from Magda, a doomed beauty who bewitches men, to Angela, a proselytizing vegetarian Goth, to Natasha, a hellcat who tears his house apart looking for speed, to Ala, the nerdy economics-student girlfriend of the friend who stole Magda. Through it all, a xenophobic campaign against the proliferating Russian black market escalates, to the point where the citizens have to paint their houses in national colors and one of these girls will be crowned Miss No Russkies Day—or is that just in Nails’ fevered mind?

    Wiola has a black cat called Blackie. Wiola's father was a deserter but now he is a taxidermist. Wiola's mother tells her that killing spiders brings on storms. Wiola must never enter the seamstress's 'secret' room. Wiola collects matchbox labels. Wiola is a good Catholic girl brought up with fables and nurtured on superstition. Wiola lives in a Poland that is both very recent and lost in time.Swallowing Mercury is about the ordinary passing of years filled with extraordinary days. In vivid prose filled with texture, colour and sound, it describes the adult world encroaching on the child's. From childhood to adolescence, Wiola dances to the strange music of her own imagination.

    A masterpiece of post-war Polish literature, Stone Upon Stone is Wiesław Myśliwski’s grand epic in the rural tradition—a profound and irreverent stream of memory cutting through the rich and varied terrain of one man’s connection to the land, to his family and community, to women, to tradition, to God, to death, and to what it means to be alive.Wise and impetuous, plainspoken and compassionate Szymek, recalls his youth in their village, his time as a guerrilla soldier, as a wedding official, barber, policeman, lover, drinker, and caretaker for his invalid brother.Filled with interwoven stories and voices, by turns hilarious and moving, Szymek’s narrative exudes the profound wisdom of one who has suffered, yet who loves life to the very core.

    An ex-astronaut is hired to look into the death of several wealthy businessmen. The authorities suspect a pattern, but neither the police nor a supercomputer enlisted for the investigation can crack the case. On a trail leading across Europe, the ex-astronaut barely escapes numerous attempts on his life. Having set himself up as a potential victim, he realizes that he may now be the target of a conspiracy--and that the conspiracy is not the work of a criminal mind, but a manifestation of the laws of nature. Certain patterns have begun to emerge from the chaos of modern society. Some of those patterns can be fatal. . .

    The barn was then set on fire. Anyone attempting to escape, or found in hiding, was quickly killed.The story soon spread that the massacre was organised and executed by Nazi paramilitary forces. It seemed to fit. Similar atrocities had taken place in nearby villages – although none of this scale. But the truth was very different. Over the course of the twentieth century fragments of the real story began to surface. It emerged that the perpetrators of the act were in fact the Polish villagers, who, on one afternoon, turned on and killed their Jewish neighbours. But why?Part history, part memoir, part detective story, The Crime and the Silence is an award-winning journalist’s account of the events of July 1941: the true story of the massacre, a portrait of a town coming to terms with its dark past, and a vital contribution to Holocaust literature.

    I cannot promise the reader that at any point he will shake his sides with laughter, but I can promise him a wry pleasure to be derived from the skilful dissection of folly.” Bertrand Russell Professor Mmaa’s Lecture, given to a packed auditorium, deals with the habits, mentality and culture of Homo sapiens. But both the professor and his entire audience are termites; the whole story is set inside a termite mound.Naturally, Themerson’s attempt to comprehend humankind by examining how they would have been understood by insects is very funny. Termites have no sight, just a sense of smell, and can only explain their surroundings and lives through their insects’ angle on the world. The closing scene of the novel reveals what the termites have been researching and what has happened to their mound, giving the whole story an ironic twist.But this novel has much more to offer. Themerson’s heightened expertise and instinct for parodying the language and methods of scholarship, and the morals and manners of the academic world, produces a merciless and comical survey of philosophical views and attitudes. He pillories religion, language, reason and scholarship, as insect thinkers with suspiciously familiar names scuttle through the pages of the novel. A great many cases of dogmatic thinking and narrow-mindedness are exposed to ridicule. The only path that seems to earn the author’s approval is pluralism of ideas. You can see just why Bertrand Russell calls this novel a useful gospel for sceptics.Professor Mmaa’s Lecture is in the tradition of philosophical satire, whose most famous proponents are Voltaire and Swift, and is a rare incidence of light yet deep prose that can be read with great pleasure on several levels.