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Anne Applebaum

American-Polish journalist and historian, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Gulag, Iron Curtain and Autocracy, Inc.

5 things

Speak, MemoryBook Vladimir Nabokov

loved

I reread this last night, and I still think it's one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written.

Five Books interview on memoirs of communism

2012-03-05·fivebooks.com ↗

The Captive MindBook Czeslaw Milosz

recommended

He is important to read because he's simultaneously critical of his characters and sympathetic to them. It's very difficult, now, to think back into that time, when people had very limited choices. If you chose to oppose the regime, that might mean you couldn't get medicine for your sick mother, your children couldn't go to school and you might get kicked out of your apartment. We don't have to face those choices. Miłosz is very good at explaining them.

Five Books interview on memoirs of communism

2012-03-05·fivebooks.com ↗

A World ApartBook Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski

recommended

He wasn't in the Gulag for long – only a couple of years, until 1941 – but what I like about his book is that, unlike many memoirs, it's not just about his story or what happened to him. It's more like a series of short stories, of the kind written by [Varlam] Shalamov or one of the Gulag novelists. Each chapter is a story about a different person or situation, together with an accompanying set of thoughts or meditations.

Five Books interview on memoirs of communism

2012-03-05·fivebooks.com ↗

Memoir of HungaryBook Sandor Marai

recommended

Sándor Márai is one of the great Hungarian novelists. He was in Hungary during the war, and left in 1948. This book is about a neutral intellectual's encounter with communism, and it records what he saw as it happened.

Five Books interview on memoirs of communism

2012-03-05·fivebooks.com ↗

The Snows of YesteryearBook Gregor von Rezzori

recommended

Like The Snows of Yesteryear, which is a straight autobiography, it evokes a time and a place that no longer exists.

Five Books interview on memoirs of communism

2012-03-05·fivebooks.com ↗

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