The Black Seasons (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

by Michal Glowinski (Author), Marci Shore (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A mosaic of memories from a childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto and a life in hiding on the other side of the wall

When six-year-old Michal Glowinski first heard the adults around him speak of the ghetto, he understood only that the word was connected with moving-and conjured up a fantastical image of a many-storied carriage pulled through the streets by some umpteen horses. He was soon to learn that the ghetto was something else entirely. A half-century later, Glowinski, now an eminent Polish literary scholar, leads us haltingly into Nazi-occupied Poland. Scrupulously attentive to the distance between a child's experience and an adult's reflection, Glowinski revisits the images and episodes of his childhood: the emaciated violinist playing a Mendelssohn concerto on the ghetto streets; his game of chess with a Polish blackmailer threatening to deliver him to the Gestapo; and his eventual rescue by Catholic nuns in an impoverished, distant convent. In language at once spare and eloquent, Glowinski explores the horror of those years, the fragility of existence, and the fragmented nature of memory itself.

About the Author
Michal Glowinski is among the most renowned literary scholars in Poland and the author of numerous works of literary criticism, history, and theory. He is a long-time professor at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Marci Shore is assistant professor of history and Jewish studies at Indiana University.

Jan T. Gross is professor of politics and European Studies at New York University. He is the author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, a national bestseller in the U.S. that looked at the role of the Poles of this town in aiding the Nazis.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press (August 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810119595
• ISBN-13: 978-0810119598
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #817,773 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #39 in

  Books > Nonfiction > Foreign Language Nonfiction > More Languages > Polish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful translation of a moving childhood memoir, September 6, 2005

By	Christine H. Snyder (Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Black Seasons lets the reader share the fragments of childhood memories of a Jewish child survivor in Poland during German occupation and the Holocaust. This brilliant translation of Michel Glowinski's recounting of his childhood memories is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the experiences of Jewish families in Poland during the time of the "industrialized mass murder", and at the end also shares the reflections of the author at a later time in his life. This book is unique in that it is the honest recounting of fragmentary childhood memories of a time of constant unspeakable fear, told in articulate and eloquent language.