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Gottland (2006)

by Mariusz Szczygieł(Favorite Author)

4.3 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Czarne

review 1: It speaks to the quality of storytelling and bizarre historical details that make Gottland so enjoyable while focusing on such a niche subject. Inside are some truly absurd and lyrical essays centered around Czechoslovakia, mostly starting during the Modern Age and through Communism. Szczygiel is a Polish journalist investigating such strange stories as a Czech shoe manufacturer who built the first company towns, and another about a Soviet statue of Stalin that is “disappeared,” along with all the artists who took part in its construction, but my favorite is the story about tracking down Franz Kafka’s living niece that’s truly Kafkaesque. This is a wonderful book and perfectly examples how history can be penned with an artist’s flair. For fans of Mark Kurlansky, ... morestrange history, Stephen Greenblatt, Jon Ronson and offbeat news.
review 2: Szczygiel is a Pole writing about the old Czechoslovakia (and the present-day Czech Republic), and while I'm not sure about the nuances of that, this is an engaging book about people just trying to live through the — well, Kafkaesque — times they were in, when there's never a list of people whose names you can't say, but you're supposed to intuit it; when the man commissioned to design a gigantic statue of Stalin really, really doesn't want the job but gets it anyway, to his demise; when a writer is imprisoned for 15 months in solitary confinement, only to find that there was never a record of her arrest and is told that she might have just made it up. It's funny, tragic, absurd, and smart, exploring what it's like to live under totalitarianism and the choices, or lack thereof, that people had to make. less

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