It’s New Year’s Eve in Kraków, 1992. Club-footed photocopyist Leo has allowed his homeless friend Ania to share the evening with him in the warmth of his post-communist bachelor pad. But what he longs to do, once Ania finally goes, is to continue reading the diary of the mysterious Tamara, who left her book in his [...]
CHRISTMAS EVE 1992 Kraków, Poland “We’re closed.” That’s what I said to the woman as the chimes by the front door announced her entrance. I didn’t even bother preceding it with a ‘sorry’. It was quarter to two on Christmas Eve and I was just about to lock up shop and go home. Who can [...]
As a writer, it goes without saying that I have always been an avid reader. And the older I get, the fussier I become with my reading, and the harder I am to please. But that does not seem to be the case with many other readers. The astounding success of a number of contemporary [...]
I want to fly backwards in time, and head for my old Art Nouveau apartment – the one my children and I used to share with our newly opened school. It was right in the historic heart of Kraków, within earshot of the quarter-hourly chimes that drifted from an aortic plethora of medieval churches and [...]
It’s Halloween, the end of the half-term holiday, so their huge Art Nouveau flat is not infested with the usual chaos and commotion of their new private school. Just her two children and her husband. She’s looking forward to seeing all three of them again, after her weekend away in the Tatra mountains. Forgiveness is still rife [...]
Yesterday evening I went out to dinner with my husband. Nothing unusual in that, I suppose. Except that we’ve been separated these last two years. In fact, that’s when I started this blog - November 2017. It was supposed to serve as a kind of therapy for my battered heart. And, if my mellowed feelings [...]
This summer holiday I binged on books. I just read and read and read. And then read some more. Bingeing and gluttonising and craving for more and more and more – a heavenly addiction like an opiate of the gods. I could almost go so far as to say that reading is the cure for [...]
Wendy Skorupski 