The Last Mazurka: A Family's Tale of War, Passion, and Loss
Tarnowski has penned a stunning multigenerational family memoir, reaching back into the past to recount the vanished lifestyle of his grandparents, his parents' harrowing World War II experiences, and his own coming-of-age as a displaced person. The aristocratic Tarnowski family cut a wide swath through the semifeudal social fabric of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Poland. Landed gentry, they owned and operated a gracious agrarian estate that housed and fed relatives, servants, and numerous peasant families. But as World War II loomed, the extended clan began to unravel at a rapid speed. When Germany invaded Poland, the author's parents escaped via Romania and Palestine, setting into motion a tragic chain of events that foreshadowed the dissolution of both the family and their increasingly archaic way of life. Achingly beautiful and bittersweet, this intimate family chronicle reads like a novel. Flanagan, Margaret