BOOKPATHS

Nicolaus Copernicus Museum, Frombork, Poland

Frombork, Poland, celebrates the life and work of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.  Visit the Nicolaus Copernicus Museum website for travel information.

[The] 700-year-old history of the town [has] left numerous tokens. They are discovered every year by new troops of tourists. What attracts them is the unique architecture of the cathedral grouping, rich history and mysteries of the universe, but the most important is Nicolaus Copernicus. – from Nicolaus Copernicus Museum Website

Warsaw, Poland

Alan Furst talks about the Warsaw he describes in The Spies of Warsaw, “the latest of his 10 taut and richly atmospheric World War II-era espionage thrillers.”

‘There is something about the city and Poland itself that I find magnetic,’ Mr. Furst said from his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on the eve of the paperback release of 'The Spies of Warsaw' earlier this summer. ‘Even though Warsaw was completely destroyed in the Second World War, its past is still alive. It’s there — you can feel it when you stand in the Old Town and look down at the Vistula and see the river winding through the city. It’s like looking at history.’ – from “Love. Death. Intrigue. Warsaw,” by Steve Dougherty, The New York Times

Poland

Frances Mayes travels “under the Polish sun.”

Suddenly, the market square of Krakow appears. Magnificent! The Rynek Glowny is the great piazza of Europe— Siena and Brussels notwithstanding. Only Venice's San Marco compares in scope, and Krakow's is more visually exciting. Because nothing in the old town could be built higher than the cathedral, the scale remains human. We're stunned by intact neo-Classical buildings with Renaissance, Baroque and Gothic touches. Spared from World War II bombing, the enormous space breathes Old World. – from “Under the Polish Sun,” by Frances Mayes, Smithsonian Magazine (online title:  “A Whirlwind Tour Around Poland”)

Warsaw, Poland

The Zookeeper’s Wife: a True Story, by Diane Ackerman (New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2007)

Winner of the 2008 Orion Book Award, The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the humane and heroic story of Warsaw Zoo manager, Jan Żabiński, and his wife, Antonina, who hid “around three hundred people” during World War II in their “villa” and the empty cages and sheds on the zoo grounds.  Based on Antonina’s diaries, Jan’s writings, and other historical documents, Ackerman pulls readers into the destruction, despair, fear, courage, compassion, and all too brief moments of joy and hope, in occupied Warsaw.   In the last chapters, Ackerman pays a final and fitting tribute to Jan and Antonina as she retraces “the zookeeper’s wife’s” footsteps in modern day Warsaw.

By the time spring [1943] came, the hibernating zoo began churning with life, trees unfurled new leaves, the ground softened, and many city dwellers arrived, gardening tools in hand, to work their small vegetable plots.  The Żabińskis gave refuge to even more desperate Guests, who joined the villa, underfoot in closets, or crept into small sheds and cages.  Their lack of comforts, photographs, and family relics greatly saddened Antonina, who described them in her diary as ‘people stripped of everything but their lives.’ – from The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackermn

Related Websites

Diane Ackerman’s Website

Publisher’s Website

Warszawskie Zoo

Poland

Ian Jack remembers Ryszard Kapuscinski.

“As a foreign reporter for the Polish Press Agency he saw an awful lot - Africa, South America, Asia, 28 revolutions in the wake of European de-colonisation - but his quick reports couldn't begin to describe the rich complexity of the reality in front of him. Agency reporters, filing daily, were, as he described them, "terrible victims of information". His books could never have been written without this experience, but their success as literature is owed to a different side of Kapuscinski. Before he was a reporter, he was a poet and short-story writer: his sentences, with their rhythms and images and careful selection of the persuading detail, could have been written by a fine novelist.” – from “Kapuscinski: a Dispatch from the Late Master of Reportage,” by Ian Jack, The Independent

Poland

Culture Vulture chooses Poland as the second stop on their World Literature Tour.