It will do what it is supposed to do
Listening time: 7 minutes. This marvelous prose-poem comes from a travel book by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski,...
The apostle of freedom
Vasily Grossman sings freedom despite having lived in a time and place where it was desperately rare. Even one of...
For love of a letter
A letter carried, quite literally, close to the heart, despite the torment its presence provokes. Vasily Grossman's mother died in...
A bulwark against brain-washing
Listening time: under 9 minutes.  Sadly, some things in the state of the world are driving me to spend more...
To go or not to go
The Hungarian poet György Faludy weighs up whether to stay in Hungary or to leave at the start of the...
As piercing as …
This piercing stare at a little girl is disturbing for its lack of empathy or even warmth towards a child.  ...
How to hide a poem (II)
Listening time: under 5 minutes.  This disturbing quotation is striking on several levels.  By the Hungarian poet György Faludy concerning...
As puny as …
An ideologically committed army officer expects her child to be born robust and struggle-ready, and is disappointed by his neo-natal...
Silence or story?
Ivan is the protagonist of Grossman's novel Everything Flows, apparently modelled on his brother in law. This is an account...
Lost in Russia
The American writer John Steinbeck and the photographer Robert Capa spent months preparing for their trip to the Soviet Union...
This I do not know
One of the best books I read last year is The Russian Journal of John Steinbeck. He spent a month...
Freedom fatigue
Many people long for and fight for one form or another of freedom.  Many others have it and take it...
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