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Author: Heda Kovály
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781847084767
Category : Antisemitism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A classic account of life under Nazism and Stalinism that will appeal to fans of Alone in Berlin and Stasiland.
Author: Heda Kovály
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781847084767
Category : Antisemitism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A classic account of life under Nazism and Stalinism that will appeal to fans of Alone in Berlin and Stasiland.
Author: Heda Margolius Kovály
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1616954973
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
This rediscovered masterpiece captures a chilling moment in the stifling early days of Communist Czechoslovakia. 1950s Prague is a city of numerous daily terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say to a State Security agent under pressure. A loyal Party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.
Author: Ivan Margolius
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118387325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
Reflections of Prague is the story of how a Czech Jewish family become embroiled in the most tragic and tumultuous episodes of the twentieth century. Through their eyes we see the history of their beloved Prague, a unique European city, and the wider, political forces that tear their lives apart. Their moving story traces the major events, turmoil, oppression and triumphs of Europe through the last hundred years – from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the First World War; from the vibrant artistic and intellectual life of Prague in the times of Kafka, the Capek Brothers and Masaryk to years of hunger in a Polish ghetto and the concentration camps of Hitler; from the tyrannous rule of Stalin to the rekindled hopes of Dubcek and the subsequent Soviet occupation to liberation under Havel. Told from Ivan’s perspective, it is a poignant but uplifting tale that tells of life lived with purpose and conviction, in the face of personal suffering and sacrifice. ‘A remarkable book. This archetypical story of the twentieth century is intertwined with an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative of the history of the Czechs, of Prague, interspersed with samples of exquisite poetry by great contemporary poets. So the narrative flows like Eliot’s sweet Thames full of the debris of tragic lives, of horrors, of moments of beauty and testimonies of love – all against the backdrop of man’s inhumanity.’ Josef Škvorecký ‘A poignant and vivid mémoire of a child searching for traces of his father, lost in the murky ideologies of post war Central Europe. An engrossing book.’ Sir John Tusa
Author: Peter Demetz
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429930357
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
Author: Stef Penney
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 1681441152
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 675
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Book Description
Sometimes you have to travel to the farthest edge of the world in order to find your true place in it... A panoramic historical epic and an unforgettable love story from the author of The Tenderness of Wolves, for fans of Kristin Hannah, Sarah Perry, and Barbara Kingsolver A whaler's daughter, Flora Mackie first crossed the Arctic Circle at the age of twelve. Years later, in 1892, determination and chance lead her back to northern Greenland as a scientist at the head of a British expedition, defying the expectations of those who believe a woman has no place in that harsh world. Geologist Jakob de Beyn was raised in Manhattan. Yearning for wider horizons, he joins a rival expedition. Jakob and Flora's paths cross. It is a fateful meeting, where passion and ambition collide and an irresistible attraction is born. The violent extremes of the north obsess them both: perpetual night and endless day; frozen seas and coastal meadows, and the strange, maddening pull it exerts on the people trying to make their mark on its vast expanses - a pursuit of glory whose outcome will reverberate for years to come.
Author: Madeleine Albright
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062030361
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
“A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action, a chronicle of a war in progress from a partisan faithful to the idea of Czechoslovakian democracy.” -- Los Angeles Times Drawn from her own memory, her parents’ written reflections, and interviews with contemporaries, the former US Secretary of State and New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Albright's tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring Before she turned twelve, Madeleine Albright’s life was shaken by some of the most cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, the Battle of Britain, the attempted genocide of European Jewry, the allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. In Prague Winter, Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exile leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind, a journey with universal lessons that is simultaneously a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history. It serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past, as seen through the eyes of one of the international community’s most respected and fascinating figures in history. Albright and her family’s experiences provide an intensely human lens through which to view the most political and tumultuous years in modern history.
Author: Hans Medick
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
ISBN: 1319241751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
One of the most momentous and destructive wars in European history, the Thirty Years War has long been studied for its diplomatic, political, and military consequences. Yet the actual participants in this religiously motivated, seemingly endless conflict have largely been ignored. Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke reveal the Thirty Years War from the perspective of those who lived it. Their introduction provides important insights into the roiling religious and political landscape from which the war emerged, as well as a thoughtful examination of the war's stages and enduring significance. An unprecedented collection of personal accounts, many of them translated for the first time into English, combine with visual sources to convey directly to students the experience of early modern warfare. Incisive document headnotes, maps and illustrations, a chronology, questions to consider, and a bibliography enrich students' understanding of this fateful war.
Author: Anna Funder
Publisher: Odyssey Editions
ISBN: 1623730376
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.
Author: Heda Margolius Kovály
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
"A story of the human spirit as its most indomitable... one of the outstanding autobiographies of the century." San Francisco Chronicle "Once in a rare while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time and ourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities of human nature... Mrs. Kovaly experienced the two supreme horrors of what Hannah Arendt called this terrible century. But her book is not just a personal memoir of inhumanity. In telling her story – simply, without self-pity – she illuminates some general truths of human behavior... Quietly, with cumulative force, it shows us how the totalitarian state feeds on the blindness and the weakness of man." Anthony Lewis, New York Times "A wonderfully expressive writer. Although her approach is above all personal, Kovaly’s reflections on her experiences reveal a high degree of insight into politics, individual and institutional behavior, and the formation of attitudes." Christian Science Monitor "A Jew in Czechoslovakia under the Nazis, Kovaly spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and several concentration camps, losing her family and barely surviving herself. Returning to Prague at the end of the war, she married an old friend, a bright, enthusiastic young Jewish economist named Rudolf Margolius, who saw the country's only hope for the future in the Communist Party. Thereafter, Rudolf became deputy minister for foreign trade. For a time, the Margoliuses lived like royalty, albeit reluctantly, but then, in a replay of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Rudolf and others, mostly of Jewish background, were arrested and hung in the infamous Slansky Trial of 1952. Kovaly's memoir of these years that end with her emigration to the West after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 are a tragic story told with aplomb, humor and tenderness. The reader alternately laughs and cries as Kovaly describes her mother being sent to death by Dr. Mengele, Czech Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald drunk at a reception, the last sight of her husband, the feverish happiness of the Prague Spring. Highly recommended." Publishers Weekly
Author: Richard F. Kuisel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691151814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Preface -- Note on anti-Americanism -- America à la mode: the 1980s -- Anti-Americanism in retreat: Jack Lang, cultural imperialism, and the anti-anti-Americans -- Reverie and rivalry: Mitterrand and Reagan-Bush -- The adventures of Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds in the land of the Gauls -- Taming the hyperpower: the 1990s -- The French way: society, economy and culture in the 1990s -- The paradox of the fin de siècle: anti-Americanism and Americanization.
