Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
Slavenka Drakulic is a writer of great sensitivity, intelligence and grace. (ALICE WALKER )
A formidable writer. (SUNDAY TIMES )
Her writing has the spare poetry of Marguerite Duras. (GUARDIAN )
Slavenka Drakulic is a journalist and writer whose voice belongs to the world. (GLORIA STEINEM )
A formidable writer. (SUNDAY TIMES )
Her writing has the spare poetry of Marguerite Duras. (GUARDIAN )
Slavenka Drakulic is a journalist and writer whose voice belongs to the world. (GLORIA STEINEM )
Product Description
Europe is still a divided continent. In the place of a fallen Berlin wall, there is a chasm between the East and the West. Are these differences a communist legacy, or do they run even deeper? What divides us today? To say simply that it is the understanding of the past, or a different concept of time, is not enough. But a visitor to this part of the world will soon discover that we, the Eastern Europeans, live in another time zone. We live in the twentieth century, but at the same time we inhabit a past full of myths and fairy tales, of blood and national belonging, and the fact that most people are lying and cheating or that they have the habit of blaming others for every failure...' An intimate tour of life on the streets of Budapest, Tirana, Warsaw and Zagreb, as those cities continue to acclimatise to the post-Communist thaw, Café Europa does not provide easy solutions or furnish political pallatives. Rather as a Croatian with a viewpoint of ever-widening relevance, the value of Slavenka Drakulic's wry and humane observations lie in the emotional force of their honesty and the clarity of their insight.....
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Insight tempered by frustration,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cafe Europa: Life After Communism (Paperback)
Drakulic writes with a scientific precision: she subjects the trivial elements of daily life to an analytical intelligence to make them reveal the essence of life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. Her anger is palpable but her dry wit never allows the work to become a 'rant,' and her ideas are persuasive without being bludgeoning. The only essay I disagreed with was her assertion that the disparity between the state of Americans' teeth and those of Eastern Europeans was a consequence of lack of self-esteem left over from communism. I'd thought it was a consequence of American neurosis!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an valuable insight...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cafe Europa: Life After Communism (Paperback)
I would wholeheartedly recommend Draculic's book to anyone who wonders what has happened to Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism almost fifteen years ago. The author writes lucidly about her own experiences of life under a communist regime, and her thoughts on the development of former Communist countries since 1989/90. Having studied History at university, I felt that perhaps the appeal of the book might be limited to like-minded people, but every friend that I have recommended it to has found it interesting and enjoyable. I read it whilst travelling through Central Europe, and it made me realise that whilst cities such as Prague, Budapest and Warsaw may now have the outward trappings of Western capitalism, this does not reflect the situation below the surface, in the attitudes of citizens, and their memories of the very recent past.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A collection of essays,
By DubaiReader "DubaiReader" (Dubai United Arab Emirates) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Cafe Europa: Life After Communism (Paperback)
I read this book while on holiday in modern day Croatia, chosen because the author is Croatian (although she now lives in Vienna with her Swedish husband).
It is basically a collection of essays which appear to be strangely frozen in time between the fall of Communism and the modern Croatia which I visited. It was this photograph of a country in turmoil that was its appeal. Writing this review six months later, several things have stuck with me about the book. Firstly, the fact that Communism did work for many people and for those above a certain age, the difficulties in adjusting to the changes were huge, both culturally and financially. No longer were they in a job for life, nor were they supported into their old age - and many did not have sufficient time ahead to earn enough for their retirement. At the time that the book was written (1996-1999) Draculic seemed unable to envision a time when Croatia might become in any way truly Western. The title refers to the cafes that sprung up in Eastern Europe, pertaining to be like their Western counterparts but falling well short of the mark, but the Croatia that I visited in 2010 seemed to be making its mark in modern Europe. I saw few old communist style vehicles, for example, and even though I was searching for signs of the old regime, there seemed little of it left. One or two anecdotes also stuck with me, particularly the problem of smuggling items such as vacuum cleaners across the border from Austia bacause they were either too expensive or not available back home. One vacuum cleaner absorbed the entire allowance, and that was even with a false receipt for its cost written by the seller. I don't think I would have got as much out of the book had I read it at a different time and place but it was fascinating to realise how much the country had changed in such a relatively short space of time.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
