Extract

A Family History of Fear1 by Agata Tuszyńska is an emotional story written in order to come to terms with a double, Jewish-Polish legacy. Published in 2005, the book became a bestseller; not only did it receive positive reviews, but it was also nominated for the Prix Medicis.

According to many critics, Tuszyńska’s narrative book is one of the most important testimonies of the Jewish-Polish experience after World War II (Wróbel). This combination of biography, family saga and confession is a rare example of personal non-fiction in Polish literature, where “there are still very few literary works of that kind”2 (Sitek). Ryszard Kapuściński praised the author for her courage in writing an important chapter in the story of Polish-Jewish relations, and for her thoughtful reflection on the problem of the Otherness (Rev. of). Reviewers complimented “the innovative structural approach” (Radgowski), “honesty” (Dobrołęcki) and its “effort to present the complex truth about pre- and post-war interconnections between Jews and Poles” (Bratkowski).