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A review by michaelnlibrarian
Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szabłowski
3.0
The first half of this book looks at gypsies and their dancing bears after the end of the communist regime in Bulgaria - an outside organization worked diligently to compensate the owners of these bears while carefully negotiating their removal from those owners and transfer to a special preserve for their care. There are different aspects of this that serve as an allegory for people who were nostalgic for their lives under socialist government and the challenges of such transitions. This hundred pages was quite engaging, and well presented, although it was somewhat repetitive.
The second half is made up of nine different articles or essays prepared at different times, it appears, and about Cuba, Poland (two essays), Albania, Serbia, Georgia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Greece. These didn't really flow from one to the next, in my view. They are not necessarily on teh them of people nostalgic for life under their previous socialist governments; rather they are different aspects of this transition. (In the case of Cuba, the transition had yet to occur.)
The blurb-summary on the back says, "In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuscinski, award winning Polish journalist Witold Szablowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Easter Europe and Cuba . . ." I have read Kapuscinski; I'm not sure what "tradition" is being referred to other than that Szablowski is Polish and writing his observations of other places and that was true of Kapuscinski, but I would say Kapuscinski was a more artful writer.
For some reason I was annoyed by a small mistake in the translation, or perhaps in the original Polish - Estonian is noted as a complex language, one that has fourteen tenses. Estonian has fourteen cases, not fourteen tenses.
The second half is made up of nine different articles or essays prepared at different times, it appears, and about Cuba, Poland (two essays), Albania, Serbia, Georgia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Greece. These didn't really flow from one to the next, in my view. They are not necessarily on teh them of people nostalgic for life under their previous socialist governments; rather they are different aspects of this transition. (In the case of Cuba, the transition had yet to occur.)
The blurb-summary on the back says, "In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuscinski, award winning Polish journalist Witold Szablowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Easter Europe and Cuba . . ." I have read Kapuscinski; I'm not sure what "tradition" is being referred to other than that Szablowski is Polish and writing his observations of other places and that was true of Kapuscinski, but I would say Kapuscinski was a more artful writer.
For some reason I was annoyed by a small mistake in the translation, or perhaps in the original Polish - Estonian is noted as a complex language, one that has fourteen tenses. Estonian has fourteen cases, not fourteen tenses.