Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Held Captive to Old Ways of Life in Newly Free Societies
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 6/27/1980
WEBSITE:
CITY: Warsaw
STATE:
COUNTRY: Poland
NATIONALITY: Polish
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2012023655 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2012023655 |
| HEADING: | Szabłowski, Witold, 1980- |
| 000 | 00735cz a2200217n 450 |
| 001 | 8910679 |
| 005 | 20160621051010.0 |
| 008 | 120217n| azannaabn |a aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a no2012023655 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca09119385 |
| 035 | __ |a (Uk)008402251 |
| 040 | __ |a NjP |b eng |e rda |c NjP |d NjP |d IEN |d Uk |
| 046 | __ |f 1980 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Szabłowski, Witold, |d 1980- |
| 374 | __ |a Reporters and reporting |2 lcsh |
| 375 | __ |a male |
| 377 | __ |a pol |
| 400 | 1_ |a Shablovsʹkyĭ, Vitolʹd |
| 670 | __ |a Zabojca z miasta moreli, 2010: |b t.p. (Witold Szabłowski) cover flap (b. 1980) |
| 670 | __ |a Tańczące niedźwiedzie, 2014: |b t.p. (Witold Szabłowski) cover page 4 (reporter) |
| 670 | __ |a Tanechni vedmedi, 2016: |b t.p. (Vitolʹd Shablovsʹkyĭ) |
PERSONAL
Born June 27, 1980; married Iza Meyza.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer.
AWARDS:Melchior Wankowicz Award, 2008; Journalism Award, European Parliament, 2010, for “Two Bodies Will Wash Ashore Today.”
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Witold Szablowski is a writer and journalist from Poland. He has received prizes for his reporting work, including the 2008 Melchior Wankowicz Award and the 2010 European Parliament Journalism Award. Szablowski is best known for his journalistic work focused on Turkey.
The Assassin from Apricot City
The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, includes twelve essays on Turkey from Szablowski. He profiles a Turkish terrorist group called All Agca, which was active in the 1980s in the title essay. Another piece focuses on a messianic cult from the seventeenth century led by Sabbatai Zevi. The first essay concerns the current immigrant crisis in Turkey.
Jacob Daniels, reviewer in World Literature Today, suggested: “Sometimes Szabłowski makes awkward generalizations. … These statements feel lazy and run contrary to his theme of human complexity. But when he tells poignant stories about tangible men and women, a broader picture begins to emerge—baffling as the image may be.” Writing on the Cosmopolitan Reviews website, Katarzyna Zwolak commented: “There are a lot of colors, flavors, smells and sounds of Turkey in this book, and many incredibly vivid and interesting stories about particular Turkish cities and villages like Adana, Gaziantep or Edirne. As Szabłowski uncovers Turkey, his book is like traveling around the country and discovering different places, cultures, environments and very different people that one may meet on his/her Turkish way. And this is the Turkey that Szabłowski presents in his collection. If you want to explore such a country, it is a real must-read.” A contributor to the Culture.pl website, remarked: “A good reporter is a catalyst to the story—he removes the gag obstructing people from speaking and makes the story develop according to its own powerful stream that covers more and more areas. And Szabłowski has this special ability.” Lucy Popescu, reviewer on the Huffington Post website, asserted: “For anyone interested in this rich, varied, frustrating country, The Assassin from Apricot City is essential reading, seamlessly translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Szablowski’s combination of literary reportage and personal reflections are reminiscent of the late Ryszard Kapuściński’s dispatches from foreign parts.”
Dancing Bears
In Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Held Captive to Old Ways of Life in Newly Free Societies, Szablowski begins by discussing the history of the dancing bears of Bulgaria. The gypsies in the country trained used inhumane practices to teach the bears to move in a way that resembled dancing. When the bears were released from captivity, it took them a significant amount of time to regain their natural habits. In an interview with with Ari Shapiro, contributor to the National Public Radio website, Szablowski explained what the meaning of the dancing bears is in context of the book and metaphorically speaking. He stated: “I’m talking about how complicated the freedom is, how painful it might be. They are living in a kind of freedom laboratory where people teach them what freedom is, what freedom means. And when I heard this story for the first time, I realized that actually here in Eastern Europe, in the countries which used to be part of communist world or used to be so-called satellites of Soviet Union, since 1989, we’ve been living in similar freedom laboratories. And we just try to understand, like the bears in the very first moments, what’s going on.”
Jodie B. Sloan offered a favorable assessment of Dancing Bears on the AU Review website. Sloan asserted: “Elegantly pulling together the varied threads, Szabłowski combines personal histories, letting his interviewee do the talking, with a unique storytelling device. As a result, Dancing Bears is both a compelling social history and a stunning example of literary journalism.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
World Literature Today, March-April, 2014, Jacob Daniels, review of The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey, p. 76.
ONLINE
AU Review, http://arts.theaureview.com/ (March 3, 2018), Jodie B. Sloan, review of Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Held Captive to Old Ways of Life in Newly Free Societies.
Cosmopolitan Review, http://cosmopolitanreview.com/ (March 30, 2014), Katarzyna Zwolak, review of The Assassin from Apricot City.
Culture.pl, http://culture.pl/ (August 10, 2011), review of The Assassin from Apricot City; (January 26, 2016), Mikolaj Glinski, review of Dancing Bears.
Harpers Online, https://harpers.org/ (February 1, 2018), excerpt from Dancing Bears.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ (January 31, 2014), Lucy Popescu, review of The Assassin from Apricot City.
National Public Radio Online, https://www.npr.org/ (March 6, 2018), Ari Shapiro, author interview.
Polish Culture, http://www.polishculture.org.uk/ (March 23, 2018), author profile.
Witold Szabłowski is an award-winning Polish journalist and writer, specialising in Turkish affairs. In 2008, he was the recipient of the Melchior Wańkowicz Award (category: Inspiration of the Year). His report on Turkish honour killings, ‘It’s Out of Love, Sister’, received an honorary mention at the Amnesty International competition for the best articles on human rights issues. In 2010, Szabłowski received the European Parliament Journalism Award for his reportage ‘Two Bodies Will Wash Ashore Today’, on the problem of illegal immigrants flocking to the European Union.
QUOTED: "I'm talking about how complicated the freedom is, how painful it might be. They are living in a kind of freedom laboratory where people teach them what freedom is, what freedom means. And when I heard this story for the first time, I realized that actually here in Eastern Europe, in the countries which used to be part of communist world or used to be so-called satellites of Soviet Union, since 1989, we've been living in similar freedom laboratories. And we just try to understand, like the bears in the very first moments, what's going on."
Dancing Bears' Offers A Look Into How Countries Adapted To Life After Communism
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March 6, 20184:26 PM ET
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ARI SHAPIRO
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Polish journalist Witold Szablowski's nonfiction book, Dancing Bears, introduces readers to people in formerly communist countries who have a hard time adapting to life after the being freed from oppressive regimes.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Polish journalist Witold Szablowski tells two stories in his new book "Dancing Bears." The first is a true story about literal bears freed from captivity in Bulgaria after the country outlawed the tradition of dancing bears in 2007. The second story he tells is about people freed from oppressive regimes in former communist countries. In the introduction to this book, Szablowski describes the gradual adjustment to freedom.
WITOLD SZABLOWSKI: (Reading) We have had to learn how free people take care of themselves, of their families, of their futures, how they eat, sleep, make love because under socialism, the state was always poking its nose into its citizens' plates, beds and private lives.
SHAPIRO: When I spoke with the author, he began by telling me about the dancing bears released into a park. Trainers used to lead them around by a ring through the nose.
SZABLOWSKI: The nose is very sensitive for the bears, so it's very easy to move a bear using just his nose and this little ring. It was called holka in Bulgarian. So removing holka was the first step to freedom. So bears were a bit surprised and even shocked, and they were checking their noses with their paws.
SHAPIRO: You say they, like, put their paws over their faces, touching their nose like they couldn't believe it was gone.
SZABLOWSKI: Just, like, they were surprised - totally surprised. But then they were getting more and more used to this situation. And actually that's the moment where the instincts were born because many years, the bears had spent years without any natural instincts. They began hibernating, which was not easy for them. They had never done it before. They began copulating, which was also a first time for all of them. And they began gaining fat. So the first weeks and the months of freedom were usually quite promising.
SHAPIRO: You spend the first half of your book telling the story of these dancing bears, and then it becomes clear that these bears are also a metaphor. What are you really talking about when you're talking about these bears?
SZABLOWSKI: I'm talking about how complicated the freedom is, how painful it might be. They are living in a kind of freedom laboratory where people teach them what freedom is, what freedom means. And when I heard this story for the first time, I realized that actually here in Eastern Europe, in the countries which used to be part of communist world or used to be so-called satellites of Soviet Union, since 1989, we've been living in similar freedom laboratories. And we just try to understand, like the bears in the very first moments, what's going on.
SHAPIRO: In another chapter about Cuba, a man named Alfonso tells you the fact that Communism has failed is obvious, but they can't just introduce capitalism here overnight either. That would be as if someone who hadn't eaten for ages were suddenly given five hamburgers all at once. The stomach can't cope with it. Do you think he's right?
SZABLOWSKI: Yeah. Yes (laughter). Well, you can try eat five hamburgers at once.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
SZABLOWSKI: But what we probably miss here in Eastern Europe is that taking the new system - and I mean free market, capitalism - we weren't ready. Like, we were so spontaneous, so happy that communism is over that we probably didn't think too much. We thought that only good things are coming with the new system. So we didn't prepare, like the bears. They don't know how to prepare for worse times.
SHAPIRO: You're saying that freed bears don't prepare for hibernation. They don't eat enough on the fall, and so they get cold and skinny in the winter. And people who are freed from communism are the same way.
SZABLOWSKI: Exactly. And that's what happened in Eastern Europe. Like, we didn't prepare democracy well enough to get through the turbulences we have been facing in the last few years, which - I mean the soft autocratic governments that you can see in many countries in Eastern and Central Europe in the last years.
SHAPIRO: You're describing the governments in Hungary and Poland and some of these other countries as soft autocratic.
SZABLOWSKI: Yes. I would call them soft autocratic. It's not a full autocratic regime yet, but - well, it's very heavy words I'm going to use, but I'm afraid they are on their ways. Like, they have their champions, which is Vladimir Putin in Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and I'm afraid they learned a lot from them.
SHAPIRO: And they feel comfortable with that. That's what feels like home to them.
SZABLOWSKI: I was thinking like, who's dancing bear now in this story? Like, because Vladimir Putin, for me, he's - for many years I thought he's a trainer, the guy who used to have bears, who used to train them, and he doesn't know other life. But now I think about the soft autocrats in our countries or just autocrats like Putin, that actually they are also dancing bears. They just don't know other life. They grew up in a world where you couldn't trust anyone, where you didn't have any democratic institutions, and they just follow.
SHAPIRO: Witold Szablowski, thank you very much for talking with us.
SZABLOWSKI: Thank you very much for having me.
SHAPIRO: His new book is called "Dancing Bears: True Stories Of People Nostalgic For Life Under Tyranny."
(SOUNDBITE OF EMILE PANDOLFI'S "ONCE UPON A DECEMBER")
QUOTED: "Sometimes Szabłowski makes awkward generalizations. ... These statements feel lazy and run contrary to his theme of human complexity. But when he tells poignant stories about tangible men and women, a broader picture begins to emerge—baffling as the image may be."
Witold Szablowski. The Assassin
from Apricot City: Reportage from
Turkey
Jacob Daniels
World Literature Today.
88.2 (March-April 2014): p76+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 University of Oklahoma http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Witold Szablowski. The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey. Antonia Lloyd- Jones, tr. London. Stork Press. 2013. ISBN 9780957391253
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Witold Szablowski is a Polish journalist who has written extensively about Turkey. Twelve pieces of nonfiction have been arranged into his newly translated book, The Assassin from Apricot City . Each story can stand alone, but Szablowski weaves them loosely into a larger work of art. History repeats itself, characters are reincarnated from one story to another, and problems like misogyny and exile are perpetual curses.
The title story concerns All Agca, a right-wing terrorist from Malatya where the summer is "green and orange, with the scent and flavor of apricots." In 1981 Agca traveled to the Vatican and put four bullets into the pope. John Paul II miraculously survived, forgave his would-be assassin, and even visited him in prison. Agca grew to love the pope like a father and, in what may have been a move to outfox prosecutors, proclaimed himself the messiah. The story parallels an earlier piece on Sabbatai Zevi, a seventeenth-century Smyrna rabbi who also claimed to be the messiah. After gaining thousands of followers from the Jewish community, Sabbatai was interrogated in the sultan's court. He promptly converted to Islam, spurring some adherents to follow suit and starting a crypto-Jewish subculture in the Ottoman Empire that feeds paranoia to this day.
1 of 3 3/5/18, 12:10 AM
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In the opener, Szablowski takes us to Turkey's Aegean coast. Here we meet smugglers and their human cargo--African and Middle Eastern migrants preparing for dangerous boat rides to Greece, "watching the weather channel so intently that it looks as if you could improve it simply by staring." Near the end of the book, communist poet Nâzim Hikmet is forced to flee Turkey for Europe in 1951, his wife, Münevver, following some years later. They sneak out on boats, from ports frequented by today's undocumented immigrants.
Szablowski's Turkey is a land of paradoxes: Kurds who praise family values but kill their daughters and sisters if they're raped, artists who loath the West but crave its approval, love- struck young men who long to sleep with their girlfriends but know this would make the women unmarriageable. According to one Libyan migrant, in Turkey "you'll find the sort of people who'll share their last crust of bread with you, as well as the sort who'll cut out your kidneys and dump you in the canal."
Sometimes Szablowski makes awkward generalizations. Too many sentences start with phrases like "Turkish boys are obsessed with ... " or "That's how the Turks behave whenever ..." These statements feel lazy and run contrary to his theme of human complexity. But when he tells poignant stories about tangible men and women, a broader picture begins to emerge--baffling as the image may be.
Jacob Daniels
New York City
Daniels, Jacob
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Daniels, Jacob. "Witold Szablowski. The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey."
World Literature Today, vol. 88, no. 2, 2014, p. 76+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A359733719/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=88c53fca. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A359733719
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The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey by Witold Szabłowski
MISCELLANEOUS
Author:
Witold Szabłowski
Translator:
Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Antonia Lloyd-Jones, tr. London. Stork Press. 2013. ISBN 9780957391253
The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from TurkeyWitold Szabłowski is a Polish journalist who has written extensively about Turkey. Twelve pieces of nonfiction have been arranged into his newly translated book, The Assassin from Apricot City. Each story can stand alone, but Szabłowski weaves them loosely into a larger work of art. History repeats itself, characters are reincarnated from one story to another, and problems like misogyny and exile are perpetual curses.
The title story concerns Ali Ağca, a right-wing terrorist from Malatya where the summer is “green and orange, with the scent and flavor of apricots.” In 1981 Ağca traveled to the Vatican and put four bullets into the pope. John Paul II miraculously survived, forgave his would-be assassin, and even visited him in prison. Ağca grew to love the pope like a father and, in what may have been a move to outfox prosecutors, proclaimed himself the messiah. The story parallels an earlier piece on Sabbatai Zevi, a seventeenth-century Smyrna rabbi who also claimed to be the messiah. After gaining thousands of followers from the Jewish community, Sabbatai was interrogated in the sultan’s court. He promptly converted to Islam, spurring some adherents to follow suit and starting a crypto-Jewish subculture in the Ottoman Empire that feeds paranoia to this day.
In the opener, Szabłowski takes us to Turkey’s Aegean coast. Here we meet smugglers and their human cargo—African and Middle Eastern migrants preparing for dangerous boat rides to Greece, “watching the weather channel so intently that it looks as if you could improve it simply by staring.” Near the end of the book, communist poet Nâzim Hikmet is forced to flee Turkey for Europe in 1951, his wife, Münevver, following some years later. They sneak out on boats, from ports frequented by today’s undocumented immigrants.
Szabłowski’s Turkey is a land of paradoxes: Kurds who praise family values but kill their daughters and sisters if they’re raped, artists who loath the West but crave its approval, love-struck young men who long to sleep with their girlfriends but know this would make the women unmarriageable. According to one Libyan migrant, in Turkey “you’ll find the sort of people who’ll share their last crust of bread with you, as well as the sort who’ll cut out your kidneys and dump you in the canal.”
Sometimes Szabłowski makes awkward generalizations. Too many sentences start with phrases like “Turkish boys are obsessed with . . .” or “That’s how the Turks behave whenever . . .” These statements feel lazy and run contrary to his theme of human complexity. But when he tells poignant stories about tangible men and women, a broader picture begins to emerge—baffling as the image may be.
Jacob Daniels
New York City
QUOTED: "There are a lot of colors, flavors, smells and sounds of Turkey in this book, and many incredibly vivid and interesting stories about particular Turkish cities and villages like Adana, Gaziantep or Edirne. As Szabłowski uncovers Turkey, his book is like traveling around the country and discovering different places, cultures, environments and very different people that one may meet on his/her Turkish way. And this is the Turkey that Szabłowski presents in his collection. If you want to explore such a country, it is a real must-read."
The Assassin from the Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey
By Witold Szabłowski, translated by Antonnia Lloyd-Jones
Stork Press 2013
The Assassin from the Apricot City is a collection of stories set in Turkey written by a young, very talented, award-winning Polish journalist, Witold Szabłowski. This is literary reportage at its best, rendered beautifully into English by the award-winning translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, though the book cautions that the characters are fictional.
The story that gives its title to the book is the tale of Mehmet Ali Ağca, born in the village near the city of Malatia, where the summer is green and orange, with the scent and flavour of apricots. When you think about Turkey, the man who shot the Polish pope, John Paul II, rarely comes immediately to mind. However, Szabłowski describes Ağca not just as “the would-be Pope murderer,” but provides insight into Ağca’s childhood circumstances to explain his actions.
Szabłowski researched and identified connections between Poland and Turkey and showed that there are more things in common between the two nations than one might believe. Ali Ağca’s story is just one example. Others include a story about Konstanty Borzecki (known also as Mustafa Celaleddin Paşa) whose mid-19th century book, Les Turcs anciens et modernes (The Ancient and Modern Turks), articulated his belief that Turkey should be treated as an European country. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – “the Father of the Turks” – took this perspective to modernize Turkey along European lines. With that sort of influence, it is not surprising to know that Borzecki has been called “the Forefather of the Turks.”
Witold Szabłowski in Turkey
Witold Szabłowski in Turkey; image via Stork Press
Szabłowski uncovers other connections, such as the story of Hikmet – the Polish-Turkish poet well known for his deep belief in the communist system and his never-ending love affairs. And many other similar stories that help the reader discover and see Polish politics, the past of the Polish nation and the Polish people from a very different, new, and incredibly interesting perspective.
Szabłowski’s collection of stories shows Turkey as a deeply bipolar country. On the one hand, it is very modern with a strong dedication to individual rights and a liberal approach to sex. In stark contrast, Turkey is also a very conservative country with existing practices like honor killings or arranged marriages, which young Turkish people nowadays don’t really want to follow.
We are sailing from Europe to Asia. The journey takes about a quarter of an hour. Here there are businessman along with beggars, women in chadors with women in mini-skirts, non-believers with Imams, prostitutes with dervishes, the holy with the unholy – all Turkey on a single ferry (…) Every Turk hovers between tradition and modernity a thousand times a day – the hat or the charshaf [veil]; the mosque or the disco; the European Union or dislike of the European Union.
Szablowski creates the connections that make this book so interesting. Not only is he often in the right place at the right time, but he is a good listener. As an accomplished journalist, he is able to draw information from his subjects to paint a vivid picture of contemporary Turkey.
Examples of the questions that Szabłowski asks (and tries to get the answers to):
how to put a rubber on an aubergine?
how to hold a Pride March in Turkey?
how to cure not-good fick-fick?
how to pick up a Turkish girl?
how to burn off your hair?
“Everything is politics,” he notes, quoting Thomas Mann, and Szabłowski clearly agrees. This is why some of his stories have a strong political undercurrent, especially when he explores the Kurds and their contemporary situation in the eastern part of the country; the position of women in Turkish society, as part of a magnificent description of Turkish ex-prostitutes who decide to run for political office; or the well-known debate about wearing the Muslim veil.
There are a lot of colors, flavors, smells and sounds of Turkey in this book, and many incredibly vivid and interesting stories about particular Turkish cities and villages like Adana, Gaziantep or Edirne. As Szabłowski uncovers Turkey, his book is like traveling around the country and discovering different places, cultures, environments and very different people that one may meet on his/her Turkish way.
And this is the Turkey that Szabłowski presents in his collection. If you want to explore such a country, it is a real must-read! And fingers crossed wishing for the Szabłowski’s next book. Can’t wait!
CR
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Tags: Hikmet, Katarzyna Zwolak, Konstanty Borzecki, Mehmet Ali Ağca, travel reportage, Turkey, Witold Szabłowski
2 Comments
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Antonia Lloyd-Jones
April 1, 2014 at 8:29 am
Thank you very much for your great review and for publicising this book. The caution that the characters are fictional is a publisher’s error – the content of the book is entirely true.
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QUOTED: "A good reporter is a catalyst to the story—he removes the gag obstructing people from speaking and makes the story develop according to its own powerful stream that covers more and more areas. And Szabłowski has this special ability."
The Assassin From Apricot City - Witold Szabłowski
Read in language:
English
Witold Szabłowski, cover of the book The Assassin from Apricot City, photo: press materials
Witold Szabłowski, cover of the book The Assassin from Apricot City, photo: press materials
The Assassin From Apricot City is a multi-layered story about a Turkey torn between East and West. The book was nominated for the Nike Literary Award in 2011.
Countries resemble people – full of contradictions, and uncertain which direction to take. This is the very much the image of Turkey portrayed by Witold Szabłowski in his reportages. A good reporter is a catalyst to the story - he removes the gag obstructing people from speaking and makes the story develop according to its own powerful stream that covers more and more areas. And Szabłowski has this special ability.
Witek became a newspaper specialist for non-standard tasks. He tracked down the family of Ali Agca, he was a wedding singer at a non-alcoholic wedding, and with Al Jazeera he made a programme about Polish lustration. Recently, he traveled across the new state of Kosovo as a hitchhiker, which made him the first person to choose this means of transport in that region. Nonetheless, it is Turkey that he loves the most since his first trip to this country in his student years. These days, he travels across Turkey as a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, describing its bright and dark sides, such as honour killings or the outcomes of the sexual revolution - wrote Paweł Goźliński.
The Assassin From Apricot City is a multi-layered story about a Turkey torn between East and West, between Islam and Islamophobia, a country steeped in conservatism and postmodernism, on the one hand longing for Europe, and expressing euroscepticism on the other.
Each of Szabłowski’s reportages covers a story where someone's fate is at stake. Every one of his protagonists has the opportunity to speak with a strong voice and tell their story, often amazed by their own courage, fueled by the Polish reporter. Immigrants from Africa, young girls fleeing the threat of honour killings, Ali Agca – these are the subjects of Szabłowski’s stories that are just a fraction of a fabulously colorful, though not necessarily idyllic, procession that leads the reader deep into Turkey, into the heart of a nation that - infected by Europeanism - loses its regular, traditional rhythm.
Jacek Hugo-Bader:
This book is about how uncomfortable it is to stand astride. However, it is not a fitness manual, but a thrilling tale of life in two incoherent worlds.
Mariusz Szczygieł:
Witold Szabłowski writes about Turkey as I would like to, if I had knowledge about it.
The book was nominated for the 2011 Nike Literary Award.
Witold Szabłowski (b. 1980) studied political science in Warsaw and Istanbul. As an intern in CNN Türk he travelled across the whole of Turkey. In Poland, he started to work as journalist for TVN 24. In 2006, he joined the team of Gazeta Wyborcza. For the collection of reportages The Assassin From Apricot City, he has received several journalism awards, including the Melchior Award in 2007 and the Amnesty International Award. In 2010, he was awarded the European Parliament Journalism Prize for his reportage Dzisiaj przypłyną tu dwa trupy (Today Two Corpses Will Float to This Place).
Source: www.czarne.pl, wyborcza.pl, transl. GS, July 2014
Witold Szabłowski
The Assassin From Apricot City
Stork Press, November 2013
Translated by Antonia Lloyd - Jones
ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9573912-5-3
User Culture.pl's picture
Culture.pl
2011/08/10
QUOTED: "For anyone interested in this rich, varied, frustrating country, The Assassin from Apricot City is essential reading, seamlessly translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Szablowski's combination of literary reportage and personal reflections are reminiscent of the late Ryszard Kapuściński's dispatches from foreign parts."
Book Review - The Assassin from Apricot City
31/01/2014 13:28 GMT | Updated 01/04/2014 10:59 BST
In The Assassin from Apricot City, Polish writer Witold Szablowski strikes an excellent balance between hard-hitting journalism, astute political analysis, and humorous observations. His reportage provides a fascinating insight into contemporary Turkey, its strengths and many contradictions.
Szablowski begins by exploring the diversity of opinion surrounding the demonstrations that took place in Taksim Square, Istanbul, in June 2013. Initially, aimed at preventing Gezi Park from being turned into a shopping mall, they became a direct action against Turkey's authoritarian government. Through interviews with demonstrators, students and local businessmen Szablowski explores the increasing polarisation of Turkish society and heightened tension between Islam and secularism.
Szablowski is eloquent on Turkey's conflicting aspirations towards and distrust of the West as represented by the main political parties. In one hilarious passage, he uses the length of politicians' moustaches to differentiate between them: "The nationalists have the longest ones...well groomed, trimmed along the upper lip....The socialists have a small feather-bed under their noses, which comes right down to their teeth...the ones who take the greatest care of their moustaches are the Islamists. Theirs are exactly the same size as the space provided for them by nature, and they keep them trimmed to a length of no more than five millimetres."
Interviewing ordinary Turks, journalists, academics and other experts, Szablowski traces Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rise to power. The picture he draws is of a savvy operator who carefully repositioned himself politically in order to win votes. Once "a diehard Muslim" he has tempered his outward behaviour in recent years: "Erdogan now offers his hand to women without feeling that he is sinning. But privately he will never offer his hand to any woman, except for his wife." His authoritarian stance may yet be his undoing as he is increasingly battered by protests and political resignations.
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In the east of the country Szablowski discovers that "[n]owhere in the world does a brother love his sister as much, nowhere do the children love their parents as much, or the parents their children." But in this close-knit community, where family honour is everything, this can become a deadly love. Women are routinely murdered after falling for the wrong person, for having a high school sweetheart or for being raped.
For anyone interested in this rich, varied, frustrating country, The Assassin from Apricot City is essential reading, seamlessly translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Szablowski's combination of literary reportage and personal reflections are reminiscent of the late Ryszard Kapuściński's dispatches from foreign parts. The book ends with an image which perfectly summarises the country's competing influences: "a picture of two women standing side by side, up to their waists in water. One was in a Muslim costume, covering everything except her eyes. The other was topless."
Song and Dance
By Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Witold Szablowski
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By Witold Szablowski, from Dancing Bears, a book of reportage that will be published next month by Penguin Books. Szab?owski is a journalist. Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Gyorgy Marinov hides his face in his right hand, and with his left taps the ash from his cigarette onto the ground, which in the village of Dryanovets is a deep brown color that passes here and there into black. We’re sitting outside his house, which is coated in gray plaster. Marinov is a little over seventy, but he’s not bent double yet, although in Dryanovets, a village in northern Bulgaria that’s inhabited mainly by Roma, very few men live to his age.
It’s not much better for the women either. There’s a death notice pinned to the doorframe of Marinov’s house, with a picture of a woman only a little younger than he is. It’s his wife — she died last year.
If you go through that door, passing a cart, a mule, and a heap of junk along the way, you come to a dirt floor. In the middle of the room there’s a metal pole stuck into the ground. A female bear called Vela spent almost twenty years tied to it.
“I loved her as if she were my own daughter,” says Marinov, casting his mind back to those mornings on the Black Sea when he and Vela pointed their noses in the direction of the water, had a quick bite of bread, then set off to work along the road as the asphalt rapidly grew warm in the sun. And those memories make him melt, just as the sunshine would melt the asphalt in those days, and he forgets about his cigarette until the burning tip starts to singe his fingers; then he tosses the butt onto the brown-and-black earth, and he’s back in Dryanovets, outside his gray house with the death notice pinned to the doorframe.
“As God is my witness, I loved her as if she were human,” he says, shaking his head. “I loved her like one of my immediate family. She always had more than enough bread. The best alcohol. Strawberries. Chocolate. Candy bars. I’d have carried her on my back if only I could. So if you say I beat her or that shehad a bad time, you’re lying.”
Vela first appeared at the Marinovs’ house at the beginning of the gloomy 1990s, when Communism collapsed and Bulgaria’s collective farms began to go under.
Marinov had to ask himself the basic question of every redundant worker: What else am I capable of doing? “In my case the answer was simple,” he says. “I knew how to train bears to dance.”
His father and grandfather were bear keepers, and his brother, Stefan, had kept bears ever since leaving school. “I grew up around bears,” says Marinov. “I knew all the songs, all the tricks, all the stories. I used to bottle-feed my father’s two bears by hand. When my son was born, he and the bears were kept together. There were plenty of times when I got it wrong — my baby drank from the bear’s bottle, and the bear from his. So when they fired me from the collective farm, there was one thing I knew for sure: if I wanted to go on living, I had to find a bear as fast as possible.
“I went to the Kormisosh nature reserve. The forester brought out a little bear. She was a few months old. She’s looking at me. And I’m looking at her. I kneel down, hold out my hand, and call, ‘Come here, little one.’ She doesn’t move, just gazes at me, and her eyes are like two black coals. You’d fall in love with those eyes — I tell you.
“I took a piece of bread out of my pocket, put it in the cage, and waited for her to go inside. Again she looked at me. She hesitated for a moment, but then she went in. ‘Now you’re mine,’ I thought, ‘for better or for worse.’ Because a bear can live for thirty years — half a lifetime. I thought, ‘Your name will be Valentina.’ Vela for short.”
“When I suddenly appeared at the front door with a bear, my wife went crazy.
“ ‘Are you out of your mind? What sort of a life are we going to have?’ she screamed, and came at me with her fists flying.
“I did understand her to some extent. The life of a bear keeper isn’t easy. Of course, he can earn a living. On a good day at the seaside I earned more than I did in a whole month at the collective farm. But you have be on the alert the whole time to make sure the bear doesn’t go wild and harm you — you don’t know when its instincts might awaken. Vela sometimes had hens flapping around her head while she slept, and it never occurred to her to eat them. But a bear has no sense of gratitude, and if it goes wild, it won’t remember that you’ve fed it corn and potatoes for the past fifteen years.
“The moment my wife saw that shaggy little creature she also saw the nights we would spend out in the rain, trailing from yard to yard in the hope that someone would toss us a few pennies, and the people who would laugh at us.
“But by the time the first winter came, my wife was urging me to make Vela a shelter. And whenever it rained, she took an umbrella and ran to the tree where Vela was tied up. If she could have she’d have kept her in the house, the way some city folk keep dogs.”
“I would never have hit Vela. My God! Just the thought of it brings tears to my eyes. I’d sooner have tormented myself than her.
“So in that case, how did I train her? Easy. I just took her a short way out of the village, brought out my gadulka and some candy, started to play, and tried to persuade her to stand on her hind legs. When she did, she got a piece of candy.
“She caught on very quickly. When spring came, I started to teach her more complicated things. For instance, I’d say, ‘Now, Vela, show us how the bride kisses her mother-in-law’s hand.’ And she’d give all the ladies a beautiful kiss on the hand, which got us very big tips once we were traveling around the country.
“We had a famous gymnast named Maria Gigova. Sometimes Vela and I would find a place to stand in the middle of a town and I’d say, ‘Now, Vela, show us how Gigova won her medals.’ And Vela would hop around, folding her paws exquisitely, and to finish she’d take a bow. People laughed, clapped, and took pictures, and we earned a few coins.
“There was also a guy called Yanko Rusev, an Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion weight lifter. I’d say, ‘Show us, my dear, how Rusev lifted weights.’ And she’d squat down, arrange her paws as if grabbing hold of a bar, and pant heavily.
“And when our great soccer player Hristo Stoichkov started playing for Barcelona, I’d say, ‘Now, Vela, show us how Stoichkov fakes a foul.’ And Vela would lie down on the ground, seize hold of a leg, and start howling dreadfully.
“One of my friends used to make fun of Tsar Simeon, who was our prime minister. When he took over the government, he promised to improve life for all Bulgarians within a hundred days. My friend would say to his bear, ‘Show us, my dear, how Tsar Simeon improved life for the Bulgarians.’ And the bear would lie down on the ground, cover its head with its paws, and roar terribly. That trick showed very well how life has changed in Bulgaria since they got rid of Communism.”
In 2007, when Bulgaria joined the European Union, the last of the country’s bears were taken from their keepers and relocated to a special park in Belitsa that was run by an Austrian organization called Four Paws.
“Just before she died, my wife told me she couldn’t imagine a better life than the one we had with Vela,” Marinov says. “She reacted very badly when they took the bear away from us. Neither of us could eat for a month. We pined for her like mad.
“One time I said, ‘Come on, let’s get on the bus and go to Belitsa. Let’s go and see how our Vela’s doing.’ My wife just brushed me off.
“I wondered, Will she recognize us? Has she gone wild by now, or will she still dance? If she starts to dance at the sight of us, that’ll mean she still loves us.”
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[20th century]
[Bears]
[Behavior]
[Bulgaria]
[Career as bear trainer]
[Dryanovets (Bulgaria}]
[Gyorgy Marinov]
[Human-animal relationships]
[Popular culture]
[Post-communism]
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Penguin to Publish Reportage about Dancing Bears
User mikolaj.glinski's picture
Mikołaj Gliński
2016/01/26
The English translation of Szabłowski's Dancing Bears (cover) is to appear in the prestigious Penguin Random House
The English translation of Witolf Szabłowski's Dancing Bears (cover) is to appear in the prestigious Penguin Random House in 2016.
Polish reporter Witold Szabłowski has signed with Penguin Random House. One of the most prestigious publishing companies in the world will be publishing two books by the Polish writer, and the second of them hasn't even been written yet.
The book which attracted attention of the publishing giant is Tańczące niedźwiedzie (Dancing Bears). Published in Poland in 2014, the book is a non-fiction account of Szabłowski's travels across the changing political and social landscapes of several countries, mostly in Eastern Europe both before or after transformation, including Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, and Ukraine, but also the UK and Cuba.
In the title piece, Szabłowski explores the fascinating story of Bulgaria's dancing bears. Trained by their gypsy masters, they were once a ubiquitous element of everyday life in the Balkans, performing at festivals to the merriment of the crowd. With Bulgaria's accession to the EU and rising pressure from animal rights organisations, the bears were relocated to special parks, where they were supposed to learn to be free. But in Szabłowski's book this journalistic tale becomes a metaphor for the challenges which come along with freedom.
The horrible truth is that, in spite of many years of efforts and the enormous sums of money invested in improving their lives and bringing them somewhat closer to nature, the dancing bears are still dancing. When faced with a challenge too difficult to cope with, they stand on their hind legs and start wobbling back and forth. This is their response to problems and stress, it is their response to a freedom with which they are unable to cope.
– Szabłowski says.
Dancing Bears in Penguin is scheduled to premiere in 2016 translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Szabłowski's second book (currently still in the making) whose rights were bought by Penguin will also deal with history. Entitled Przepis na historię (Recipe for History), the book will focus on some of the most important events of the 20th and 21st centuries, but tell them from the perspective of cooks.
These are not necessarily professional cooks. Rather they are people who in the time of key historical events happened to found themselves next to the cooking stove and in the centre of history.
– explains Szabłowski
Szabłowski's new book will tell several fascinating stories bridging history and the kitchen, among them that of Fidel Castro's personal cook, a young boy at the time of the revolution who ended up as a pioneering entrepreneur of Cuban capitalism – the owner of one of the first private restaurants in Cuba. Other chapters will feature as protagonists a Yazidi woman abducted by ISIS, who instead of becoming a sex-worker started cooking for the Jihadis, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi among the guests at her table. The history of Poland and Solidarność will come to the fore in the story of women cooks from the Świdnik factory's canteen who went on strike in July 1980 after the price of food was raised – an incident which according to many initiated the strikes of Solidarność on the Polish coast a month later. Szabłowski's book will also include the recipe for the famous cutlets from Świdnik's cooks.
An unknown American photographer at the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard , August 1980. Photo: Witold Górka / Forum
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LIFESTYLE & OPINION
Witold Szabłowski (b. 1980) is one of the most accomplished Polish reporters of the young generation. His first book was an acclaimed volume of reportages from Turkey, Morderca z miasta moreli (2010), whose English edition The Assassin from Apricot City was translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and awarded the British PEN Club award. Szabłowski's next book, Nasz mały PRL (2012), written together with wife Iza Meyza, was a non-fiction account of the couple's self-imposed 6-month isolation in a communist-era tenement house – a time-traveling experiment at living life as one would in Communist Poland.
Other Polish writers whose books have been published in Penguin include Bruno Schulz, Sławomir Mrożek, Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Konwicki, and Agata Tuszyńska. Before Szabłowski, the only non-fiction Polish author was Ryszard Kapuściński.
Author: Mikołaj Gliński; source: Culture.pl, 26 January 2016
QUOTED: "Elegantly pulling together the varied threads, Szabłowski combines personal histories, letting his interviewee do the talking, with a unique storytelling device. As a result, Dancing Bears is both a compelling social history and a stunning example of literary journalism."
Book Review: Award-winning journalist Witold Szabłowski collects oral histories of Eastern Europe in Dancing Bears
March 3, 2018 / Jodie B. Sloan
For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Gypsies trained bears to perform. In the early 2000’s the practice was outlawed following the fall of communism, and the bears, who had only ever known their human family, were released into a reserve. Even now, years later, the bears still stand on their hind legs to dance whenever they see a human.
In Dancing Bears: True Stories about Longing for the Old Days, Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski meets with owners and trainers, workers from the reserve, and other personalities from across Eastern Europe’s former communist states, taking down the stories of people who, like the Bulgarian dancing bears, cannot quite shake the old ways.
It seems, at first, to be a curious mix, the Bulgarian entertainment of dancing bears used as an analogy for the vibrant and violent history of Eastern Europe, but once you get stuck into this engaging, often funny, and sometimes heartbreaking book the comparisons become clear. The first half, focusing on the history of the bears, sets the scene, while the second draws on the first’s lessons and key ideas, to explore the stories Szabłowski collected on his travels.
Like the bears, people across the former Soviet Republic are learning what it means to be free (or, at least, the Western concept of it). Some struggle with the changes, finding that this natural state comes unnaturally to them after knowing another way of life for so long. Others embrace it and learn to adapt. Others still try to help those falling behind, like the wardens of the reserve. An unusual analogy, perhaps, but one that works well in the context of the region, and the beliefs and ideas explored.
Nostalgia sits at the heart of this book, whether for the old days of the dancing bears or the early days of Stalin’s rule. An intensely relatable feeling, despite being triggered by often incredibly different things, it drives the various narratives, and provides an excellent foothold for those of us who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. A modern history degree is not required for Dancing Bears, and even if your knowledge in that area is lacking, there’s still plenty to unpack as Szabłowski moves from country to country. After all, who doesn’t look wistfully back to a better (and perhaps a little rose tinted) time?
Elegantly pulling together the varied threads, Szabłowski combines personal histories, letting his interviewee do the talking, with a unique storytelling device. As a result, Dancing Bears is both a compelling social history and a stunning example of literary journalism.
Dancing Bears: True Stories About Longing for the Old Days is available now through Text Publishing.