Book description
A remarkable, multifaceted story made up of journal accounts, memories,
conversations and personal experience, The Bronski House is a paean to
Poland, a landmark in travel writing, and a family history - tied
together by the unique experience of returning from exile.
In the summer of 1992, accompanied by Philip Marsden, the exiled poet
Zofia Hinska stepped into the Belorussian village where she had spent
her childhood. The Bronski House is in part the remarkable story of what
she found. It is also the story of her mother, Helena Bronska - of her
coming of age during the Russian revolution, her dramatic escapes from
Bolsheviks, Germans and partisans, of her love and loss in a now
vanished world. It brilliantly reconstructs a world which vanished in
1939 when Soviet tanks rolled into eastern Poland. 'An odd but
splendidly imagined fish, part novel, part reverie. Marsden has a
dazzling gift for poetic evocation - and for reminding us that Britain
is not an island.'
John Fowles, Spectator
'An extraordinary, multi-faceted narrative. From diaries and memories
it recreates the true story of two polish women - mother and daughter -
amid the destruction of a whole culture'
Colin Thubron, Daily Telegraph
'He is an exquisite writer, with the elegant style, light historical
touch and detachment of a storyteller … incandescent … the best travel
writing I have read on Poland.' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Times
'A tragic, uplifting elegy to a remarkable family. Philip Marsden's
work will invigorate travel literature by helping to propel it over the
boundary into unexplored territory.'
Rory Maclean, Times Literary Supplement Philip Marsden is the author
of A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia, and The Crossing Place (which won
the Somerset Maugham Award) He is the editor of The Spectator Book of
Travel Writing.
