Within weeks of the 1981 coup in Poland, Marek Nowakowski courageously began publishing these stories under his own name and circulating them in typescripts and underground newspapers. Since then the entire collection-an inside view of the tragedy of Poland and one of the most powerful documents to emerge from Eastern Europe-has been translated into thirteen languages. Harassment of the public by police and military patrols, house searches, loyalty checks at places of employment, food shortages and the black market, the resistance of Solidarity activists who have escaped arrest and continue to print and distribute illegal literature ... the themes are obvious enough, but Nowakowski's treatment of them is masterly: fiction with the unmistakable ring of truth.
Meet the old lady whose telephone is disconnected because she rings up a relative with the news that her sick canary has started singing again, which the official "ear" naturally takes to be a coded message ("The Canary"). Meet the "energy waste inspector" who sneaks up on newspaper kiosks to catch saleswomen using too much electricity ... and sometimes shows mercy in return for goods or a heavy date ("Little Sunshine").
To learn something of present-day Poland, the place to be is not in the Central Committee Offices, but with Nowakowski's workers drinking their black-market vodka. - from Amzon