The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo (Hardcover)

~ Paula Huntly (Author) "In three days we leave for Kosovo, and I am scared..." (more)
Key Phrases: Kosovo Albanians, Cambridge School, Mother Teresa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Huntley's husband volunteered for an American Bar Association project in Kosovo to help create a new legal system in the fall of 2000, the year after NATO bombing had ended. With trepidation, Huntley decided to go, too, enrolling first in a crash course on the teaching of English as a second language so she'd have something to offer. On arriving in Prishtina, she volunteered at a language school and started keeping this diary. Her (mostly Albanian) students became her personal connection to everyday life in Kosovo; this diary, where she recorded her impressions, became her way of sharing Kosovo with the world. There are the usual funny details of life in a foreign country, e.g., the laboriously translated menu that offered "chicken buttocks on screwers." Before long, however, her students' stories take center stage: how they survived the Serb roundups, tortures and killings. As a taxi driver explained, "Some men are hard as stones." Teaching supplies are scarce, so it's serendipitous that the one American-language paperback that Huntley came across is a copy of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which she photocopied for a reading club she started. Initially leery-"God knows this country doesn't need anymore [sic] macho"-she was pleased to find her students responding to the strength and endurance of Hemingway's protagonist. Huntley and her husband returned home in April 2001, but stayed in touch, largely via e-mail, with their Kosovar friends. Huntley's journal not only shares their stories, but reminds readers that by volunteering, people get back more than they give.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In August 2002 Huntley made a decision to accompany her husband on an assignment to help build a legal system in war-ravaged Kosovo. In a move that would forever alter the core of her existence, Paula kept a journal of her experiences to memorialize and come to terms with the pain inspired by the tragic human stories she came across every day. The violence of the ethnic cleansing puppeteered by Milosevic in the late 1990s left the Yugoslavian province in shambles, but the indomitable spirit of the people stirred Paula to try and make a difference in her own way, and she volunteered to teach English to Albanian students anxious to grasp the language of freedom. By sharing with them Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, Paula bridges the language barrier to form a touching bond with the students in her class. Although she never intended for her journal to be published, its beautiful, soul-searching passages deserve to be embraced by the world. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; Later Printing edition (February 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585422118
• ISBN-13: 978-1585422111
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,295,260 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Both more and less than its cracked up to be, March 24, 2004

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is a wonderful tale of the virtues and rewards of volunteering to help those in countries less fortunate (at least for the present) than the US; at the same time, it's not exactly great literature or great writing. However, that's not what it's advertised to be, and it's not the aspiration of the author to compete with the writers of great literature. For how it came to be (a collection of emails to friends and family during the 8 months the author spent teaching English in Kosovo), this book more than meets its goal.
Paula Huntley went to Kosovo with her husband, who volunteered for an ABA project to help set up a new legal system for the new war-torn country. She took a crash course in teaching English as a second language and, once in Prishtina, Kossovo, quickly found a job teaching the language to a classroom of eager and charming Albanian students.
The book begins as Huntley's story but quickly evolves into being the story of the country and its inhabitants, specifically those who were blessed to be her students. Like volunteers everywhere, Huntley quickly learned that she was gaining and receiving far more than she was giving, in terms of compassion, understanding, insight, and personal growth.
It's not `literature,' but it's sure a terrific little book. Don't miss it. I learned a whole, whole lot about a part of the world about which I have very little knowledge.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sympathetic look at victims of war, July 29, 2003

By A Customer

Paula Huntley's remarkable journal of her eight months as a volunteer English teacher in Kosovo is that rare thing: A sympathetic, even loving look at the victims of war - in this case Kosovar Albanians - that does not at the same time demonize those in whose name the war was waged - in this case, the Serbs. Indeed, Huntley reminds us that racial, ethnic or national stereotyping, and the notions of collective guilt and collective innocence that accompany such stereotyping, is frequently at the heart of violence. In a journal entry that recounts her students' unwillingness to believe that any Albanian could have been responsible for the bus bombing that had just killed many Serbian civilians, Huntley comments, "Nor, I expect, do most Serbs believe that fellow Serbs could have committed atrocities in Bosnia or Kosovo."

Huntley's reminds us not only of our differences, but of our similarities, and of the common humanity that connects us to each other. Her deep belief in the power of human connection is the thread that winds throughout this lovely, moving book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Number 1 book about Kosova, June 6, 2003

By	Kosovar (New York) - See all my reviews

Paula Huntley the writer of this beautiful,extremely honest book is an American lady,which joins her humanitarian husband to
Kosova,despite her protests to not go there at all.
Ed, will try to rebuild a new legal system in this war ruined country and Paula will try to teach English as a second language.

'First impressions sometimes can be wrong and that happens quite often'-comes to life for Paula, when everything unpleasant such as garbage all over the streets,acrid smells,muddy streets with big holes that could swallow a little car...etc seem to dissapear completely for Paula. She understands very fast that she is in the country in which American's are more than loved.

This is a lovely book which is written by a lovely person and her experiences in Kosova, during the eight months she stayed there. It is a journal that ended up in a book and that was the right thing to do because if any book deserves immortality this should be in the top list. Why? Because it is a love story, but not about two people but two nations who love each other so dearly. Americans and Kosovars.

"First of all you represent yourself as a person, then our family, then our nation" - words I grew up with, spoken daily by my parents. I strongly believe in this rule,especially when I am
fully aware of the 'weak' human nature!
"Make bad impressions somewhere you'll get judged,your parents, and your entire nation too".

Ed and Paula Huntley,represented themselves as NICE PEOPLE.They represented U.S.A as we have always expected U.S.A. people to be during all the times when we leaned on and counted on them.
Not that U.S. people met our big expectations about them, but they exceeded them and we will always be grateful...eternally.
God Bless U.S.A and praise to Paula and Ed for their divine work.