The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman

The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman PDF Author: Andrzej Szczypiorski
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802162231
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Reissued with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a stunning and disquieting novel of heroism and cowardice A masterful novel that was a huge bestseller in Europe, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is a testament to the power of literature. Now with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who named it her “favorite book no one else has heard of” in the New York Times, the novel follows Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1943, who possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: blue eyes and blond hair. With these features, and a set of false papers, she slips out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. At times a dark lament, at others a sly and sardonic thriller, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma's arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw’s Jews are about to meet their deaths in the burning ghetto.

Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction

Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction PDF Author: Elisa-Maria Hiemer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311066741X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
The Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction aims to increase the visibility and show the versatility of works from East-Central European countries. It is the first encyclopedic work to bridge the gap between the literary production of countries that are considered to be main sites of the Holocaust and their recognition in international academic and public discourse. It contains over 100 entries offering not only facts about the content and motifs but also pointing out the characteristic fictional features of each work and its meaning for academic discourse and wider reception in the country of origin and abroad. The publication will appeal to the academic and broader public interested in the representation of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and World War II in literature and the arts. Besides prose, it also considers poetry and theatrical plays from 1943 through 2018. An introduction to the historical events and cultural developments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Czech, and Slovak Republic, and their impact on the artistic output helps to contextualise the motif changes and fictional strategies that authors have been applying for decades. The publication is the result of long-term scholarly cooperation of specialists from four countries and several dozen academic centres.

Self-Portrait with Woman

Self-Portrait with Woman PDF Author: Andrzej Szczypiorski
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802134882
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Kamil, a Warsaw sociologist, is summoned to Geneva to participate in an oral history project about the collapse of Eastern European communism and resolves to tell his own story through a gallery of portraits of the many women he has loved. These reminiscences emerge against the broader canvas of circumstances and events that have shaped the past sixty years of Poland's turbulent, tragic history. Soon he finds himself inexorably drawn to his interrogator from the "free" world; the chronicler of his life, the keeper of his secrets, and his heart's last hope for redemptive love. Self-Portrait with Woman is at once a haunting and lyrical portrait of a man, of a country, and of the twilight years of an era.

The Shadow of the Sun

The Shadow of the Sun PDF Author: Ryszard Kapuscinski
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307367096
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
A moving portrait of Africa from Poland's most celebrated foreign correspondent - a masterpiece from a modern master. Famous for being in the wrong places at just the right times, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, at the beginning of the end of colonial rule - the "sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant" rebirth of a continent. The Shadow of the Sun sums up the author's experiences ("the record of a 40-year marriage") in this place that became the central obsession of his remarkable career. From the hopeful years of independence through the bloody disintegration of places like Nigeria, Rwanda and Angola, Kapuscinski recounts great social and political changes through the prism of the ordinary African. He examines the rough-and-ready physical world and identifies the true geography of Africa: a little-understood spiritual universe, an African way of being. He looks also at Africa in the wake of two epoch-making changes: the arrival of AIDS and the definitive departure of the white man. Kapuscinski's rare humanity invests his subjects with a grandeur and a dignity unmatched by any other writer on the Third World, and his unique ability to discern the universal in the particular has never been more powerfully displayed than in this work.

The Shadow Catcher

The Shadow Catcher PDF Author: Andrzej Szczypiorski
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802135650
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
A boy's coming of age in Poland on the eve of World War II. He is Krzys, the son of a wealthy family and as he vacations in a country manor of friends he attempts a romance with their niece. An atmosphere of doom hangs over the place, the war about to destroy the class to which the protagonists belong. By the author of A Mass for Arras.

Stranger in Our Midst

Stranger in Our Midst PDF Author: Harold B. Segel
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501718290
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
A vibrant Jewish community flourished in Poland from late in the tenth century until it was virtually annihilated in World War II. In this remarkable anthology, the first of its kind, Harold B. Segel offers translations of poems and prose works—mainly fiction—by non-Jewish Polish writers. Taken together, the selections represent the complex perceptions about Jews in the Polish community in the period 1530-1990.

Freedom

Freedom PDF Author: Amnesty International USA
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 030758884X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
Bestselling authors bring together a thought-provoking collection of short stories, each inspired by one of thirty human rights adopted by the United Nations and promoted by Amnesty International. Freedom is a mix of thoughtful, serious, funny, and thrilling stories that harness the power of literature to celebrate—and affirm—our shared humanity. Published in association with Amnesty International, an array of internationally acclaimed & award-winning writers remind us these fundamental freedoms – ratified in 1948 – are just as crucial to protect and uphold today as ever. The United Nations took a moral stand against human rights crimes and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a proclamation of thirty rights that belong to us all, starting memorably with Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal.” Amnesty International is one of several international organizations promoting UDHR. It is a world-leading grassroots human rights organization & a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people – no matter who they are or where they are. Authors include: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kate Atkinson, Ishmael Beah, Paulo Coelho, Nadine Gordimer, Marina Lewycka, Henning Mankell, Yann Martel, Rohinton Minstry, David Mitchell, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates.

The Shivering

The Shivering PDF Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525431896
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” selection from the award-winning, bestselling author On the day a plane crashed in Nigeria, Ukamaka lets into her apartment a neighbor in a Princeton sweatshirt she’d never met before to keep her company and pray. United in a common loss, Ukamaka is glad to have someone she can confide in about her home, her ex-boyfriend, her life as a graduate student in the United States, and her ambitions. But, in her eagerness to discover a new friend in Chinedu, Ukamaka is slow to realize the tragic and desperate secrets he is protecting from her. In this poignant, stirring short depicting the solitary lives that immigrants face in the United States, acclaimed author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie celebrates faith and the fragile ties that can grant salvation. An ebook short.

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire PDF Author: José Manuel Prieto
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802199380
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
Now in paperback, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire was acclaimed by The Hartford Courant as "a thrilling discovery ... a reversal of the letters [of] Saul Bellow's Herzog ... [with] a Nabokovian delight in words and texts." J. is a smuggler living in Russia, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. In Istanbul he takes a commission to trap an endangered Russian butterfly and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. In the port of Odessa, she disappears, and J. continues alone to a small village on the Black Sea. Letters from V. begin to arrive, and as J. hunts the butterfly, he seeks a way to lure V. back into his life. Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, wrote The Tennessean, is "an amazing jewel of a story ... that winks with wit [and] wears its astonishing craftsmanship lightly." "An aesthetically blissful reading experience ... Nabokov's spirit, alive and kind, has touched [Prieto] with its butterfly wings." -- Aleksandar Hemon, The Village Voice Literary Supplement "...Nocturnal Butterflies is an impressive performance by a writer whose gifts are clearly abundant." -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times "A beautiful, lavish, seedy, poetic, and magical book.... Pure pleasure for the literary mind." -- Chris Kridler, The Baltimore Sun

The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945

The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945 PDF Author: Harold B. Segel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114042
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 692

Book Description
The Iron Curtain concealed from western eyes a vital group of national and regional writers. Marked by not only geographical proximity but also by the shared experience of communism and its collapse, the countries of Eastern Europe--Poland, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former states of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany--share literatures that reveal many common themes when examined together. Compiled by a leading scholar, the guide includes an overview of literary trends in historical context; a listing of some 700 authors by country; and an A-to-Z section of articles on the most influential writers.