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Mud sweeter than honey : voices of communist Albania / Margo Rejmer ; translated from the Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and Antonia Lloyd-Jones ; with an introduction by Tony Barber.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Rejmer, Małgorzata, author.
- Standardized Title:
- Błoto słodsze niż miód. English
- Language:
- English
- Polish
- Subjects (All):
- Political persecution.
- History.
- Communism.
- Albania--Politics and government--1944-1990.
- Albania.
- Politics and government.
- Communism--Albania--History--20th century.
- Political persecution--Albania--History--20th century.
- Albania--Biography.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- xvii, 278 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Brooklyn, New York : Restless Books, 2021.
- Language Note:
- In English, translated from the Polish.
- Summary:
- Winner of the Polityka Passport Award -- Winner of the KoÅ>cielski Award -- A revelatory oral history of the people who suffered, rebelled, and survived under the secretive dictatorship of Enver Hoxha in Albania, one of the twentieth century's most brutal and Kafkaesque regimes, from award-winning Polish journalist Margo Rejmer. -- For nearly half a century Albania was held captive by one man. A cruel dictator with a deep paranoid streak, Enver Hoxha sealed the country's borders, severed alliances, and enacted a totalitarian regime of gulags and purges. Many thousands suffered and died in silence, a silence that lingers today: thirty years after the end of Hoxha's regime, its victims are still waiting for justice. In Mud Sweeter than Honey, Albanians break the silence. Margo Rejmer spent years in Albania gathering interviews that shed light on the four decades of Hoxha's rule and virtually every walk of life: teachers and children, imprisoned and exiled writers, nuns and factory workers. She arranges the voices of her interlocutors into a chorus that bears witness to how ordinary people lived and died. We are immersed in desperate border crossings, prison revolts, and everyday struggles to make a living. We meet a writer who finds secret freedom in a tiny village library of banned books, overlooked by censors. We meet a man who still only speaks in a whisper, afraid of being overheard. While Albanians endured surveillance, imprisonment, and torture under Hoxha, they also read books and fell in love, raised families and found ways to survive. In the tradition of Svetlana Alexievich, Mud Sweeter than Honey is our most vivid, intimate portrait available in English of this little-understood corner of Europe.
- Contents:
- Machine generated contents note: pt. ONE Children of the Dictator
- What Was Meant to Be Has Already Happened
- The Ballad of Uncle Enver and the Blood That Was Shed
- The Trial
- The Happiest People in the World
- Enver Is Forever in My Heart
- Children of the Dictator
- pt. TWO Mud Sweeten than Honey
- The Bad Boy
- Mud Sweeter than Honey
- Italian Songs
- How We Used to Vote Bright and Early
- By the Light of the Paraffin Lamp
- Beauty Will Always Find a Way
- A Tale About Shoes
- pt. THREE Circles
- In a Whisper
- The Enemies' Revolt
- Until the Bird Returns
- How a Child Prodigy Was Diminished
- The Broken Tree
- Everything and Nothing
- Circles
- pt. FOUR Stone on the Border
- Survival Strategies
- A Stone on the Border
- Freedom in the Village of Zogaj
- The Zone
- Everyone Is Born Free
- The Many Deaths of Enver Hoxha
- Are They People Like Us?
- pt. FIVE The Fortress Crumbles
- Pretty Papers
- No One Feels Guilty
- The Fortress Crumbles
- How I Demolished Albania's Berlin Wall
- The Sinking Ship
- The Red Can.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-276).
- ISBN:
- 1632062836
- 9781632062833
- OCLC:
- 1232513561
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