The Bronski House [Hardcover]

Philip Marsden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1997

More than fifty years after fleeing the Russians and Nazis, poet Zofia Ilinska returns to the tiny Eastern European village of her birth to find her old home and to rediscover her childhood and the history of her family."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"This whole terrible world is upside down," exiled Polish poet Zofia Bronska Ilinska tells English author Marsden (The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians, LJ 4/15/95) as they revisit the Eastern Europe of her childhood. Published in Britain in 1996, this work combines an account of 1990s Belarus, based on Marsden's travels with Ilinska, with an interpretation of the past, drawn from her mother's journals and papers from the outset of World War I to the start of World War II. The traumas of war are intermingled with the everyday life of two generations of young women coming of age. In scenes reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago, the book powerfully depicts the effects of war on a wealthy family who became impoverished refugees. Plagued by constantly shifting borders, the family also moved from place to place as they fled the ever-changing enemy?sometimes German, sometimes Russian, sometimes their Belorussian neighbors. A moving account; highly recommended for all libraries.?Denise J. Stankovics, Rockville P.L., Vernon, Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The late poet Zofia Ilinska, nee Bronski, fled Poland in September 1939 at the start of World War II; she was 17. Along with her mother, Zofia settled on the English coast in Cornwall. In 1993, after receiving a letter from a cousin in Poland asking her to visit, Zofia returned to her native village. She was accompanied by her longtime friend, writer Philip Marsden. She looked for the family home and the silver candlesticks she had buried in the forest. She found neither, but a few of the villagers remembered her. Marsden intertwines the story of Zofia's journey with her mother's letters, notebooks, and diaries, hundreds of pages that bring the world of Zofia's family's prewar past in Europe to life. Both a requiem for a vanished world and a tribute to a remarkable woman. George Cohen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1ST edition (June 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155970392X
• ISBN-13: 978-1559703925
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,620,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Travel > Europe > Belarus & Ukraine
  • #84 in Books > History > Asia > Belarus

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So light of touch but yet so far reaching, July 26, 1999

By 

johanna([e-mail]) (Guildford) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bronski House (Hardcover)

The language is so poetic and fluent, it hurls you away, lightly and fluffily to a different era; a world long gone and forgotten. It has something of an East European Gone With The Wind theme, only much more concise and fleetingly. I longed for more pages, a hundred more, fivehundred more, in this novel too timid and subdued somehow. Perfect script for a fullblown-no-expenses -spared Hollywood film!