An eye-catching new book introducing Polish culture to English-language readers. Can you distil the essence of a country into just 100 words? We think so. Written by Mikolaj Gliński, Matthew Davies and Adam Żulawski, and illustrated by award-winning graphic designer Magda Burdzynska, Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Words is made up of a series of 100 full-colour illustrations and articles that each discuss all sorts of Polish words, such as milośc (love), imieniny (name day), ojczyzna (fatherland), wolnośc (freedom), and even filiżanka (tea cup). Often via etymology, each word is an entry point to the multi-layered world of Polish culture and history. Winner of Most Beautiful Books in Poland 2018 in the Guide category.
"Can you distil the essence of a country into just 100 words? We think so. 'Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Word' will make you fall in love with a country with one of the most unusual histories out there. It'll also show you how languages intersect and whole cultures arise, and make you realise just how interwoven our world is. Along the way, you'll find out why quarks are made from curd cheese, learn what elephants have to do with a Central European country, and discover how pierogi saved an entire town. Plus, you'll get to enjoy 100 illustrations by Polish graphic designer Magda Burdzyńska"--Back cover.
Captains of Illustration' is an A-Z anthology dedicated to the legacies of illustrators whose works cover the century between Polish independence in 1918 up through 2018 (...) A team of eleven experts in the field of illustration ? historians, researchers and artists ? came together to highlight and share the most interesting themes and anecdotes of the period through the works of Polish illustrators. They arranged 100 keywords alphabetically, covering subjects and stories that artists brought to life, yet also the methods and techniques they used, along with the trends and stylistic inspirations that motivated them. - Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna, 'Captains of Illustration' editor.
The term fisherwoman does not exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, and Linda Greenlaw, the world's only female swordfish boat captain, isn't flattered when people insist on calling her one. "I am a woman. I am a fisherman. . . I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown." Greenlaw also happens to be one of the most successful fishermen in the Grand Banks commercial fleet, though until the publication of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, "nobody cared." Greenlaw's boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the doomed Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the mother of all storms in 1991 and became the focus of Junger's book. The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right -- proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster. There is the weather, the constant danger of mechanical failure, the perils of controlling five sleep-, women-, and booze-deprived young fishermen in close quarters, not to mention the threat of a bad fishing run: "If we don't catch fish, we don't get paid, period. In short, there is no labor union." Greenlaw's straightforward, uncluttered prose underscores the qualities that make her a good captain, regardless of gender: fairness, physical and mental endurance, obsessive attention to detail. But, ultimately, Greenlaw proves that the love of fishing -- in all of its grueling, isolating, suspenseful glory -- is a matter of the heart and blood, not the mind. "I knew that the ocean had stories to tell me, all I needed to do was listen." -- Svenja Soldovieri
• Incisive, humorous and heartbreaking oral histories of people living in formerly Communist countries holding fast to their former lives, from one of Poland’s finest journalists. • Like Anna Funder’s Stasiland or Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time, readers are guided through the aftereffects of authoritarian rule and the challenges of freedom via Szablowski’s immediate, heartwrenching stories of the people who lived through the collapse of Communism. • The bold and brilliant allegory at the centre of Dancing Bears is of bears raised and trained by Bulgarian Gypsies. With the fall of Communism, the bears were released into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance. • Dancing Bears traces the remarkable true stories of people throughout Eastern Europe and Cuba who, like the bears, are now free, but seem nostalgic for a time when they were not. • Szablowski is an award-winning Polish journalist—his reportage on illegal immigrants flocking to the EU won the European Parliament Journalism Prize, and his previous book about Turkey, The Assassin from Apricot City, won an English PEN Award. • This book comes at a pivotal moment for oral histories, following the success of 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time. • For fans of Stasiland by Anna Funder, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick and Tale of Two Cities by John Freeman.
"This expanded edition of Postwar Polish Poetry (which was originally published in 1965) presents 125 poems by 25 poets, including Czeslaw Milosz and other Polish poets living outside Poland. The stress of the anthology is on poetry written after 1956, the year when the lifting of censorship and the berakdown of doctrines provoked and explosion of new schools and talents. The victory of Solidarity in August 1980 once again opened new vistas for a short time; the coup of December closed that chapter. It is too early yet to predict the impact these events will have on the future of Polish poetry." From Amazon.
Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), Poland's national poet, was one of the extraordinary personalities of the age. In chronicling the events of his life--his travels, numerous loves, a troubled marriage, years spent as a member of a heterodox religious sect, and friendships with such luminaries of the time as Aleksandr Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper, George Sand, Giuseppe Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, and Aleksandr Herzen--Roman Koropeckyj draws a portrait of the Polish poet as a quintessential European Romantic. Spanning five decades of one of the most turbulent periods in modern European history, Mickiewicz's life and works at once reflected and articulated the cultural and political upheavals marking post-Napoleonic Europe. After a poetic debut in his native Lithuania that transformed the face of Polish literature, he spent five years of exile in Russia for engaging in Polish "patriotic" activity. Subsequently, his grand tour of Europe was interrupted by his country's 1830 uprising against Russia; his failure to take part in it would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years Mickiewicz shared the fate of other Polish émigrés in the West. It was here that he wrote Forefathers' Eve, part 3 (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834), arguably the two most influential works of modern Polish literature. His reputation as his country's most prominent poet secured him a position teaching Latin literature at the Academy of Lausanne and then the first chair of Slavic Literature at the Collége de France. In 1848 he organized a Polish legion in Italy and upon his return to Paris founded a radical French-language newspaper. His final days were devoted to forming a Polish legion in Istanbul. This richly illustrated biography--the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911--draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes.
"Nothing of the former world holds true anymore," Zofia Nalkowska wrote in her Wartime Diaries on 7 May 1943. "Nothing has remained." The burning of the Warsaw ghetto had broken Nalkowska's privileged life in two; in the years to come, the need to bear witness to the horrors she had seen firsthand would lead this gifted member of the Polish avant-garde to write the stories in Medallions.
Macabre trains and maverick railwaymen inhabit the world of THE MOTION DEMON, a translation of the highly-original short story collection from the pen of Stefan Grabinski, first published in 1919. Sometimes called the "Polish Poe" or the "Polish Lovecraft," Grabinski is a unique voice in fantastique literature who crafted his own style and addressed themes that no other horror/fantasy writer at the time was exploring. Grabinski's work was largely ignored in his native country during his life, but in recent times there has been growing international interest in this writer, with notable voices, such as author China Mieville, proclaiming him a master of horror/fantasy. Translator Miroslaw Lipinski introduced the writings of Stefan Grabinski to English-speaking readership, first with translations in the small press, and then with the short story collections THE DARK DOMAIN (1993), THE MOTION DEMON (2005) and ON THE HILL OF ROSES (2012). Of Polish ancestry and British-birth, Lipinski resides in New York. He is currently working on a mammoth volume of Grabinski stories for Centipede Press' "Masters of the Weird Tale" series.
With almost 60 chapters, contributions from 30 authors and nearly 450 pages, VeryGraphic: Polish Designers of the 20th Century is the first comprehensive history of Polish graphic design. The book showcases its immense and diverse legacy, from the world-renowned Polish Poster school to the lesser-known achievements of artists in the field of applied graphic design, including books and covers, typography and lettering, logos and visual identification as well as packaging. Chronologically detailing the work of over 60 of the most prominent Polish designers, the volume offers a review of Polish graphic design unprecedented in its scope. The cover of each copy is hand-painted, rendering it a truly one-of-a-kind object.
