Shore ... writes first rate reportage in these cool-eyed but warm-hearted dispatches from the former Soviet bloc. Independent
Marci Shore, an associate professor of intellectual history at Yale, has spent much of her adult life in central and eastern Europe. She is the author of Caviar and Ashes- A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, which won eight prizes, including a National Jewish Book Award. She is also the translator of Michal Glowinski's Holocaust memoir The Black Seasons.
[A] brilliant and perceptive book about a part of the world, as
[Shore] explains, ‘where the past is palpable and heavy’ ... part
memoir, part reportage, a treatise on the philosophy of history,
and part romance written with lyrical beauty in places…there’s an
interesting and original idea on almost every page.
*Spectator*
Part-memoir, part-intellectual history, Shore’s book follows her
journey into the heart of the Polish and Czech intelligentsia,
exploring their reactions to and involvement in the Holocaust, the
purges and the revolutions that dominate 20th century Eastern
European history….poignant and thought-provoking.
*Sunday Times*
Her fine book is a very personal account of the people that she
came to know in eastern Europe after the end of Soviet domination
in 1989… The novelty of Shore’s approach lies in her focus on the
families of Poland’s Stalinists.
*Financial Times*
[Shore’s] kaleidoscope book of reminiscences and encounters gives
an authentic feel to the difficulties that outsiders often have in
making sense of this intricate history…Ms Shore…does an excellent
job of bringing to life the still rancorous relations between Jews
of rival persuasions.
*The Economist*
Beautifully written, brilliantly perceptive and often moving… With
the opening of the archives, many excellent histories of communist
eastern Europe have appeared in recent years… but I cannot think of
any that succeed so well as this. In combining subtle historical
judgements with literary flair, Shore has produced a
masterpiece.
*BBC History Magazine*
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