Hanka, passionate exile
Hanka, passionate exile is a collection of the best writings of a woman who delighted in the intimacies of travel in the intersecting worlds of Asia, Africa and old Europe.
Hanka left a repressed Poland in her twenties, with a desire to communicate about the consequences for individuals of decisions made by distant rulers. With gentle humour, an active conscience and a strong streak of non-conformity, Hanka writes compelling, edgy tales of people and places far from her cultural origins, from the Orient to Africa, and from contemporary Poland to her adopted England. In her engaging way, Hanka quietly, and layer by layer, reveals her own personality and story: a woman who freed herself from a communist past to embrace a passionate desire for freedom of personal opportunity, linked with a sensuous care for the natural world.
228 pages, paperback. The book is profusely illustrated in colour, including photographs by renowned artists.
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What the critics say:
What an extraordinary voice Hanka had. Like Nabokov and Conrad before her, she seems to have intuitively felt the poetry of the English language. There's both an immediacy and a timelessness to her writing. Every observation, every juxtaposition of disparate images, is an ode to life, the dark and the light, the ugly and the good... ELLEN EMERSON, PUBLISHER
I always enjoyed the wealth of observation and empathy in her articles, the rich sensuous experience they conveyed. She really was a writer with as much heart as intelligence. RENATE WELSH-RABADY, NOMINEE FOR THE 2010 ASTRID LINDGREN MEMORIAL AWARD FOR CONTEMPORARY CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULTS LITERATURE WORLDWIDE
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