Book picks similar to
Busia: Seasons on the Farm with My Polish Grandmother by Leonard Kniffel
grandmothers
poland
polish-american-childhood
Forbidden Strawberries
Cipora Hurwitz - 2010
All at once the life of her tranquil family became a Hell. Forbidden Strawberries is the riveting auto-biography of Cipora Hurwitz, an innocent young girl caught up in the Maelstrom of the Holocaust.Her eldest brother survived the war by the skin of his teeth by fleeing to the Soviet Union. The second brother was murdered when only sixteen. Her parents, by great efforts, succeeded in hiding their little daughter and thereby save her life. Devastatingly, they themselves were unable to escape the hands of the murderers.Cipora, as yet a young child and an orphan, was miraculously saved after surviving the Budzyn camps and the Majdanek extermination camp. The author relates the story of her life during the Holocaust to a delegation of Hashomer Hatzair youth and Israeli High School students on a mission to the death camps in Poland. In Forbidden Strawberries, Cipora presents her testimony on what transpired to her family and friends who were exterminated, thus paying tribute to their memory.
Polish Fairy Tales
Antoni Józef Gliński - 1862
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The History of Love
Nicole Krauss - 2005
Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives...
Season of Storms
Andrzej Sapkowski - 2013
A witcher whose mission is to protect ordinary people from the monsters created with magic. A mutant who has the task of killing unnatural beings. He uses a magical sign, potions and the pride of every witcher -- two swords, steel and silver. But what would happen if Geralt lost his weapons?In this standalone novel, Geralt fights, travels and loves again, Dandelion sings and flies from trouble to trouble, sorcerers are scheming ... and across the whole world clouds are gathering - the season of storms is coming...
1920 Diary
Isaac Babel - 1991
“Babel’s 1920 Diary, the source for many of his remarkable Red Cavalry stories, is itself as remarkable as the stories, particularly when one considers that the diarist was a journalist of only twenty-six. The staccato sentences in which Babel rapidly describes the horrific details of revolutionary brutality have the impact of an accomplished style, one that in its spontaneously elliptical way is strangely no less artful than the artfully nuanced directness that is the triumph of Red Cavalry.”—Philip Roth “An electrifying translation accompanied by an indispensable introduction. . . . Babel’s journey is a Jewish lamentation . . . a tragic masterwork.” —Cynthia Ozick, The New Republic “A precursor of Holocaust literature, and more powerful in its effect than any Holocaust literature that I have managed to read.”—Harold Bloom, New York Times Book Review
Entanglement
Zygmunt Miloszewski - 2007
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.
Where the Devil Can't Go
Anya Lipska - 2011
Who is she? And why did she die?Janusz Kiszka, unofficial 'fixer' to East London’s Polish community, and a man with his own distinctive moral code, has been hired to track down a missing waitress. Meanwhile, DC Natalie Kershaw, a rookie detective who’s not afraid of breaking a few rules, investigates the suspicious deaths of two Polish girls.They hail from very different worlds, but Kiszka and Kershaw are set on collision course…When Kershaw accuses Kiszka of murder, he escapes to Poland, determined to find the real killer. There he discovers a terrible secret from the country’s troubled communist past revealing why the girls were murdered.But is he too late to save the life of a third?
The Night Portrait: A Novel of World War II and da Vinci's Italy
Laura Morelli - 2020
Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who wants to ensure his own place in the ducal palace by painting his most ambitious portrait to date.Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands of a high-ranking Nazi leader, she risks her life to recover it, working with an American soldier, part of the famed Monuments Men team, to get it back. Two women, separated by 500 years, are swept up in the tide of history as one painting stands at the center of their quests for their own destinies.
Seeing Things
Patti Hill - 2009
For a woman who still climbs mountains with her dog (Miss Bee Haven) and likes to tango, the impractical visions brought on by macular degeneration are just another gift from God, adding more adventure to life. But when a tumble down the stairs breaks her ankle and leads back to her son’s home in Denver where she must convalesce, Birdie’s imagination really takes flight. Following a conversation with her grandson about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, she begins to see and speak with the unkempt literary character himself on a regular basis. As the line between reality and whimsy turns brittle, faith is tested among friends and loved ones, and hope is reborn.Seeing Things is a story about family, reconciliation, and hearing from God in unexpected ways.
The Life and Works of Chopin
Jeremy Siepmann - 2001
Chopin (1810-1849) brought romantic music to unprecedented heights of expressiveness, as illustrated in this recording by numerous examples taken from the Naxos catalog.
Swallowing Mercury
Wioletta Greg - 2014
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.
No Colours or Crest
Peter Kemp - 1958
Years of rising tension have finally given way to a global catastrophe. Millions mobilize for what would become the most massive and devastating conflict in human history. Great Britain, with a sprawling Empire to protect against the seemingly-unstoppable Axis Powers, is on the defensive.Returning to his home country just months earlier is Peter Kemp. Kemp was a young law student who volunteered to fight for the Nationalists against the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Although seriously injured during that conflict, Kemp’s extensive irregular warfare experience and enormous bravery brought him to the attention of the elite British Special Operations Executive. After a brief time as a commando raider Kemp is thrust into the chaotic world of espionage and guerilla warfare, parachuting behind enemy lines into the Balkans and later Poland. His duties forced him to fight through an intricate maze of alliances, rivalries, and betrayals among the anti-Axis guerrillas, eventually leading him to imprisonment by his Soviet “allies” in a dungeon outside of Moscow.Kemp published his story in 1959, one of only a few to detail firsthand this rarely-explored corner of Second Wold War. Although out of print for decades, this paperback and ebook rerelease allows a new generation of readers to enjoy Kemp's thrilling and important work.
A Chip Shop in Poznań
Ben Aitken - 2019
Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. Ben Aitken moved to Poland in 2016 to understand why the Poles were leaving. He booked the cheapest flight he could find, to a place he had never heard of - Poznan. This candid, funny and off-beat book is the account of his year in Poland, as an unlikely immigrant. Between peeling potatoes and boning fish, Ben spent time on the road travelling the country. He missed the bus to Auschwitz; stayed with a dozen nuns near Krakow; was offered a job by a Eurosceptic farmer and went to Gdansk to learn how communism got the chop. This is a bittersweet portrait of an unsung country, challenging stereotypes that Poland is a grey, ex-soviet land, and revealing a diverse country, rightfully proud of its colourful identity.
In the Memory of the Forest
Charles T. Powers - 1997
Assuming the role of amateur sleuth, Leszek embarks on a clue-finding mission that takes him from country to city, into the grimy offices of once-powerful bureaucrats, and face-to-face with the Catholic Church?s pious and impotent priests. And as Leszek moves closer to the truth, he is confronted with another strange mystery: the disappearance of stones from the foundations of the town?s oldest houses. The further Leszek is drawn into this mystery, the deeper into the past he must search for answers about his people, the grim tragedy of the Holocaust, and ultimately, his own identity.In the Memory of the Forest is a haunting, evocative novel that explores the impact of a murder on a community, and of history and the fate of the Jews in Poland during World War II on a people.
Marie Curie
Vicki Cobb - 2008
Filled with archival photographs and amazing fact boxes, this groundbreaking series introduces young readers to some of history's most interesting and influential characters.Supports the Common Core State Standards.