On the road to Babadag
Subtitle: travels in the other Europe
By: Andrzej Stasiuk ; translated from Polish by Michael Kandel
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9780151012718
Subjects: TRAVEL / Road Travel; HISTORY / Europe / Former Soviet Republics; LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays; HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century; Travel; HISTORY / Europe / Eastern; TRAVEL / Former Soviet Republics; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Economic Conditions; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization; TRAVEL / Essays & Travelogues; TRAVEL / Europe / Eastern; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural; LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Continental European; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs; Description and travel; HISTORY / Social History; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / General; Translations into English; TRAVEL / Special Interest / Literary; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Developing Countries
Work titles: Jadąc do Babadag
Description: "Andrzej Stasiuk is a restless and indefatigable traveler. His journeys take him from his native Poland to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine. By car, train, bus, ferry. To small towns and villages with unfamiliar-sounding yet strangely evocative names. "The heart of my Europe," Stasiuk tells us, "beats in Sokolow, Podlaski, and in Husi, not in Vienna."  Where did Moldova end and Transylvania begin, he wonders as he is being driven at breakneck speed in an ancient Audi--loose wires hanging from the dashboard--by a driver in shorts and bare feet, a cross swinging on his chest. In Comrat, a funeral procession moves slowly down the main street, the open coffin on a pickup truck, an old woman dressed in black brushing away the flies above the face of the deceased. On to Soroca, a baroque--Byzantine--Tatar--Turkish encampment, to meet Gypsies. And all the way to Babadag, between the Baltic Coast and the Black Sea, where Stasiuk sees his first minaret, "simple and severe, a pencil pointed at the sky."  A brilliant tour of Europe's dark underside--travel writing at its very best"--

"A collection of travel narratives from Central and Eastern Europe by award-winning Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-255).