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Shop nowDancing Bears
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Learn moreFor hundreds of years, Bulgarian Gypsies trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, with the fall of Communism, they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance.
In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist, Witold Szabłowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Eastern Europe and in Cuba who, like Bulgaria’s dancing bears, are now free but who seem nostalgic for the time when they were not. His on-the-ground accounts provide a fascinating portrait of social and economic upheaval and a lesson in the challenges of freedom and the seductions of authoritarian rule.
Witold Szabłowski is an award-winning Polish journalist. His reportage on the problem of illegal immigrants flocking to the EU won the European Parliament Journalism Award, and his book about Turkey, The Assassin from Apricot City, won the Beata Pawlak Award and an English PEN Award and was nominated for the NIKE Award, Poland’s most prestigious book award. Szabłowski lives in Warsaw.
Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards, as well as more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones is a prize-winning literary translator, working from Polish to English.
Reviews
“Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr. Szabłowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect it.”
“Utterly original…Provokes a far-reaching and unresolved conversation about what freedom might really mean.”
“Fascinating…A set of case studies full of tensions and contradictions.”
“Fascinating.”
“A sharply drawn account…Heartrending.”
“A surprising look at societies grappling with profound change.”
“Reports from the post-Communist world read like fairy-tales with the stench of reality. Absurd, darkly funny, compassionate, his book is a literary jewel.”
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