Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Dancing Bears


Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life under Tyranny/ Witold Szablowski, 233 p.

A very clever weaving of accounts of people struggling in the wake of post-communism in Bulgaria, Cuba, Poland, Ukraine, Albania, Estonia, Serbia, and Georgia.  The connecting thread, of course, is those  bears, whose story takes up the first half of this book.   The bears were owned by Bulgarian Roma and as a condition of that country's entry into the EU were rehabilitated in a sort of sanctuary dedicated to teaching them to be free. 

Occasionally the metaphor is strained, but mostly it works well to highlight the oddities and challenges of post-communist life for millions of people.  Thought -provoking.


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