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Books on Poland (fiction or non-fiction?)
Moll Flanders
Posts: 1,392 Forum Member
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Hello! Hope you are all enjoying the Easter Weekend and have some good books with which to enjoy it!
Does anyone know of any good books about, or set in, Poland? My brother has married a Polish woman and I want to show my enthusiasm for her country by reading some book/s set there. Either fiction or non-fiction would do. What I don't enjoy is military or political history. Either contemporary or fiction would do the trick, but I particularly love history books, or historical novels, if anyone knows of any of those. I also really love books that illuminate the life of the people in a certain place, whether rich or poor people. For example, if there are any novels similar to Philippa Gregory's, similar to TV's The Tudors, about a colourful period in royal Polish history, I would love to read it.
If you know of a book entitled, say, "The Everyday Day Life of Poles in History", that could be just what I'm looking for.
So if any of you can help me achieve my wish of reading about Poland, and impressing my sister-in-law, I'd be very grateful.
:)
Does anyone know of any good books about, or set in, Poland? My brother has married a Polish woman and I want to show my enthusiasm for her country by reading some book/s set there. Either fiction or non-fiction would do. What I don't enjoy is military or political history. Either contemporary or fiction would do the trick, but I particularly love history books, or historical novels, if anyone knows of any of those. I also really love books that illuminate the life of the people in a certain place, whether rich or poor people. For example, if there are any novels similar to Philippa Gregory's, similar to TV's The Tudors, about a colourful period in royal Polish history, I would love to read it.
If you know of a book entitled, say, "The Everyday Day Life of Poles in History", that could be just what I'm looking for.
So if any of you can help me achieve my wish of reading about Poland, and impressing my sister-in-law, I'd be very grateful.
:) 0
Comments
Definitley one to get Brownie points with my Polish relative!!!
Moll
x
Poland a thousand years ago:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Polska_992_-_1025.png/1037px-Polska_992_-_1025.png
Medieval German colonisation eastward:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Deutsche_Ostsiedlung.png
Poland after WWI:
http://84d1f3.medialib.glogster.com/media/3e/3e3a93b380b5f5425d98abcd8bdab6612f511732487f2168a5458814d30116e6/independent-poland.png
Poland after WWII:
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/eceurope/polandwest.gif
After WWII, the victorious Allies changed the borders of Eastern Europe, in part to prevent minorities issues causing future tensions and conflicts. One of the results of those changes was that the German city of Breslau became the Polish city of Wroclaw (say it like Vrotswaff) and there are two books that I've read that give a very good account of what happened to to the ordinary German people who had to move out and the ordinary incoming Polish people who found themselves in a huge ruined bomb site (see http://www.breslau-wroclaw.de/de/breslau/imgarc/00002538.jpg) which they then had to turn into a viable, thriving city again. Those Polish people, in turn, had had to move from their homes in the areas of Poland that were ceded to the Soviet Union.
Here they are:
Gregor Thum - Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wroclaw during the Century of Expulsions
Norman Davies & Roger Moorhouse - Microcosm: A Portrait of a Central European City