

The story of a Polish village & its inhabitants during the wars & between, & the changes these brought to a way of life, told through the reminescences of an elderly man. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, it's a book I cherish like an old friend.
The story of a Polish village & its inhabitants during the wars & between, & the changes these brought to a way of life, told through the reminescences of an elderly man. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, it's a book I cherish like an old friend.
The tremendous world inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me. - Franz Kafka
The pains of the birthing of a nation. A complex history but AH manages to serve it up in digestible form, and in a very engaging way too, to non-specialist readers. Now if all books on history were written like this...
A tour-de-force of a book about decay, hate, jealousy, desperation that drove a once grand family to destruction, set in the Brazilian backwater of Minas Gerais. Dark themes, certainly, but what exquisite writing.