Tag: Books

Borowski was born in 1922 in Zhitomir, in Ukraine, to Polish parents. His first book, a collection of poetry, was published in Warsaw in the winter of 1942. A few weeks later he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. He survived the war, as did his fiancée, also incarcerated in the concentration camp. After the war Borowski joined the Communist Party and worked as a political journalist.

The stories in this book (fiction, but obviously and unquestionably based on direct experience) started appearing in 1946, and were published in two collections in the late 1940s. This Way for the Gas brings all his Auschwitz stories into one volume. Because of these stories, and his poetry, Borowski was almost immediately recognized in Poland as a major literary figure, although most of his output later was political journalism. He committed suicide in 1951, still only 29. It is at times a difficult and shocking book to read because of the content, but it is also undoubtedly a work of literature.

Like all great books it is not at all as your preconceptions might lead you to expect. Many of the events and descriptions come as a surprise, and because of our collective assumptions about life in an extermination camp some of it beggars belief, but Borowski was there. This Penguin edition appears to be the only English-language version presently available, and is published by the US branch of the company. It can be obtained through the internet.

I am a collector of books about publishing, but somehow I missed this title when it was first published in 2000. Ms Athill worked for André Deutsch Ltd for most of her life, in the process gaining much respect from fellow publishing professionals as well as the authors for whom she was responsible. The book falls into two general parts: the first is an informal history of the firm and her role in it, the second describes some of the more famous authors she worked with. These include Brian Moore, Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul (who later described this book as “feminine tosh”, but not in an unkind way, you understand) and Mordecai Richler.

I must say I found the book something of a disappointment: the story of the emerging indie publishing house is sketchy and incomplete, and her anecdotes about these writers are bland and calculated not to offend. Every negative judgement is immediately ‘balanced’ by gushing admiration for their wonderful works. Even Naipaul, whose lounge-lizard charmlessness is a blight on the art of authorship, gets off pretty lightly.

The book is a surprisingly poor piece of publishing, considering its subject: a dull cover, no interior photographs, no contents page and no index.

Graham Greene used to be one of my most favoured writers until I realized that I disliked more of his novels than ones I liked. The one that ruined everything was The End of the Affair. However, I think most of his short stories are brilliant, and I still like his non-fiction.

The first volume of his autobiography, A Sort of Life, remains a key text. (The standard Greene biography, by Norman Sherry, is an inferior work – it is so bad that I came to the conclusion Greene had subversively appointed Sherry as his ‘official’ biographer believing that Sherry’s long-winded ramblings would put other more effective writers off the scent, at least for a few years.) I came across W. J. West’s book in a secondhand shop and read it with some interest. I have always believed that Greene was the ‘fifth man’ in the Philby defection, and although this book does not go so far as to claim that, there is nothing in it to contradict the idea. I always found Greene’s obsession with Roman Catholicism the least interesting thing about him, but his ambivalent politics remain an enigma.

 

The book is a tie-in with a TV programme, describing the small band of women flyers of the Air Transport Auxiliary, who delivered newly built aircraft from the factories to operational airfields. Of necessity, the young women were nearly all from a slice of pampered and leisured pre-war society, who had had the money and means to learn to fly. The outbreak of war brought down most of the British class system, with not the least impact on these women. They flew any and every kind of aircraft, from single-engined fighters, to seaplanes and four-engined bombers – usually without any tuition, always single-handed (without a crew, even on the big planes). They often had to navigate by dead reckoning. Treated at first with derision by the operational pilots (all male, of course), they quickly showed that they were the equal of any of them.

 

One of the relatively untold stories of WW2 is what happened to the ordinary German civilians who suffered under the RAF air raids on the cities, what degree of ruination was caused and what the German authorities did about it, during and after hostilities. It is only comparatively recently that German historians have started to research this.

Moorhouse is a British writer, and his subject is restricted to the story of Berlin (by no means the worst affected city).

 

A calm summary of and argument for the science of global warming, the author’s position being basically that although mankind is obviously responsible for some of the greenhouse gases and pollution affecting the world, most of the problem arises from natural causes. The book is eloquent and persuasive, and handy to have around if you get into an argument on the subject, but I keep an open mind. April 2011 in Britain was the hottest and driest April on record, and now in May the Kent crop of strawberries is ready, delicious and delicate – and a month early. They grow wine grapes on the hillsides around my English town. The sea level rises by about half a centimetre a year. (22 May 2011)