Caviar and Ashes
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A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968
Marci Shore
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Format: PaperPrice: $45.00
Marci Shore begins with this generation’s coming of age after the First World War and narrates a half-century-long journey through futurist manifestos and proletarian poetry, Stalinist terror and Nazi genocide, a journey from the literary cafés to the cells of prisons and the corridors of power. Using newly available archival materials from Poland and Russia, as well as from Ukraine and Israel, Shore explores what it meant to live Marxism as a European, an East European, and a Jewish intellectual in the twentieth century.
“This book is utterly original, and its scholarship—and I don’t use this word lightly—is breathtaking. Shore has produced a penetrating study of a host of the twentieth century’s most perplexing issues.”—Jan T. Gross, Princeton University
“Shore chronicles the collective journey of a group of brilliant and endlessly dedicated intellectuals through one of the worst hells, both physical and spiritual, of the century just ended. There is scarcely any study I can think of in any language to compare to this one.”—Michael Steinlauf, Gratz College
“A marvelous example of intellectual history at its best, this book captures the moral and political dilemmas of a generation of brilliant writers who experienced communism first as a dream, then as a nightmare. A superb addition to the ever disturbing literature on the ‘God that failed.’”—Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism
"Marci Shore's account of the founding generation of Polish intellectual Communists reaches far beyond its subject. In its deeply engaged narrative of the lives and illusions of the twentieth-century Polish avant-garde, Caviar and Ashes recovers a fascinating, talented community of men, women and ideas now rapidly receding beyond memory. Professor Shore's history of Polish Marxists is not just an impressive work of historical scholarship; it is a moving elegy to a turbulent century and a forgotten world."—Tony Judt, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
"Shore's stories are so engrossing and so well told that one can easily forget he is reading the work of a historian rather than a novelist. For these reasons—and I do not write these words lightly—the book is a genuine tour de force as intellectual and cultural history."—Robert Blobaum, American Historical Review
Publication Date: January 27, 2009
17 b/w illus.
