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6:00 PM
European Book Club: Witold Szabłowski
Book Club
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Online Online
- Language English
- Price Free of charge
From January to July 2022, this year’s season Young Voices of the European Book Club will be presented as a series of seven events.
In the upcoming meeting, presented by the Embassy of Poland in Dublin, the award-winning Polish journalist and writer Witold Szabłowski will talk about his collection of reportages, Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny.
He will also give us a first-hand account of the situation in Ukraine where he has been investigating the toll that the Russian invasion has taken on Ukrainian people.
The event will take place on 2 June 2022, at 6pm, via Zoom.
Eventbrite Booking
For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Romani trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, with the fall of Communism, they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance.
In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Eastern Europe and in Cuba who, like Bulgaria’s dancing bears, are now free but who seem nostalgic for the time when they were not. His on-the-ground reporting of smuggling a car into Ukraine, hitchhiking through Kosovo as it declares independence, arguing with Stalin-adoring tour guides at the Stalin Museum, sleeping in London’s Victoria Station alongside a homeless woman from Poland, and giving taxi rides to Cubans fearing for the life of Fidel Castro provides a fascinating portrait of social and economic upheaval and a lesson in the challenges of freedom and the seductions of authoritarian rule.
In the upcoming meeting, presented by the Embassy of Poland in Dublin, the award-winning Polish journalist and writer Witold Szabłowski will talk about his collection of reportages, Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny.
He will also give us a first-hand account of the situation in Ukraine where he has been investigating the toll that the Russian invasion has taken on Ukrainian people.
The event will take place on 2 June 2022, at 6pm, via Zoom.
Eventbrite Booking
About the Book
For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Romani trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, with the fall of Communism, they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance. In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Eastern Europe and in Cuba who, like Bulgaria’s dancing bears, are now free but who seem nostalgic for the time when they were not. His on-the-ground reporting of smuggling a car into Ukraine, hitchhiking through Kosovo as it declares independence, arguing with Stalin-adoring tour guides at the Stalin Museum, sleeping in London’s Victoria Station alongside a homeless woman from Poland, and giving taxi rides to Cubans fearing for the life of Fidel Castro provides a fascinating portrait of social and economic upheaval and a lesson in the challenges of freedom and the seductions of authoritarian rule.