Historical books from Poland
Recommended historical books (7)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into historical here are some historical books from Poland for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
Dancing Bears : True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szablowski EN
Description:
*As heard on NPR’s All Things Considered* “Utterly original.” —The New York Times Book Review “Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr. Szabłowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect it.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom An incisive, humorous, and heartbreaking account of people in formerly Communist countries holding fast to their former lives, by the acclaimed author of How to Feed a Dictator and What’s Cooking in the Kremlin For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Gypsies trained... continue
2.
Renia's Diary : A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel EN
Description:
The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English Renia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. “I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that’s why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form ... continue
3.
The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz EN
Description:
The Captive Mind examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.
4.
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk EN
Description:
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER! “A folk horror story with a deceptively light and knowing tone … elegant and genuinely unsettling.” –The New York Times Book Review The Nobel Prize winner’s latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great iss... continue
5.
The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman EN
Description:
Quickly becoming a cornerstone of Holocaust historiography--a devastatingly stark memoir from one of the lone survivors of Treblinka.
6.
The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz EN
Description:
'I hope The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves' Slavomir Rawicz Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer. On 19 November 1939 he was arrested by the Russians and after brutal interrogation he was sentenced to twenty-five years in a gulag. After a three-month journey in the dead of winter to Siberia, life in a Soviet labour camp meant enduring hunger, extreme cold, untreated wounds and illnesses and facing the daily risk of arbitrary execution. Realising that to remain mea... continue
7.
White Shroud by Antanas Škėma EN
Description:
Considered by many to be Lithuania's most important work of modernist fiction, this novel tells the story of Antanas Garsva, an emigre poet working as an elevator operator in a large New York hotel in the 1950s.