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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Central Europe

• Poland
• Czech Republic
• Slovakia
• Hungary
• Slovenia
• Romania & Moldova
• Bulgaria

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  Still Life With A Bridle by Zbigniew Herbert

  Price: £12.00    Add to Basket

  This collection of essays by Zbigniew Herbert, the highly acclaimed Polish poet, bring to life the Dutch 17th century, with it's twin associations of tulipomania and Flemish art. A first class collection from a classical-minded avant-garde poet and essayist.

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  Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  Drawing on years of interviews and conversations with Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, this beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts - widely considered to be the greatest travel writer of our time.

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  The Man who Broke into Auschwitz by Denis Avey

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  The astonishing memoir of the British soldier who smuggled himself into the most feared Nazi concentration camp and willingly swapped places with a Jewish inmate. A testament to the courage and endurance of the human spirit.

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  Along the Enchanted Way by William Blacker

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A delightful memoir of the ten years William Blacker spent living in rural Romania. His obvious affection and witty observations make this a fascinating account of an area of Europe unchanged since the middle ages until the end of the Second World War.

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  History & Myth in Romanian Consciousness by Lucian Boia

  Price: £19.99    Add to Basket

  An interesting examination of historical culture & conscience in 19th & 20th century Romania, with an emphasis on national ideology. We do however prefer his Reaktion title 'Romania: Borderland of Europe'.

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  Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan

  Price: £16.99    Add to Basket

  Carmen Bugan's moving and poetic testimony of a childhood spent under the totalitarian Ceausescu regime has drawn comparisons to Anna Funder's 'Stasiland'. As she describes her father's one-man protest, and the subsequent isolation and surveillance endured by his family, Bugan creates a powerfully intimate piece of recent history.

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  Prague: A Cultural & Literary History by Richard Burton

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  This brilliant series offers rich cultural and historical accounts of the world's great cities. Here Burton explores Prague's complex past, and the fascination it has exerted over the writers, artists and composers to emerge from its streets.

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  Slovenia and the Slovenes: A Small State & the New Europe by James Gow & Cathie Carmichael

  Price: £17.99    Add to Basket

  A good readable critical assessment of Slovenian history and culture, focusing in particular on the evolution towards, preparation for and development after independence in 1991.

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  Budapest: City of Music by Nicholas Clapton

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A lovely little hardback book which explores the culture of Budapest and the role that music has played in its history.

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  Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present by Norman Davies

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  Davies is a prolific and insightful historian and this evocative work portrays Poland as the heart of Europe in an ideological as well as a geographical sense. This revised and updated edition also tackles ably the fall of the Eastern Bloc.

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  White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies

  Price: £16.99    Add to Basket

  A comprehensive account of the Polish-Soviet war of 1919 which ended with the 'miracle of Vistula' where the Red Army was resoundingly defeated by the underdogs. Davies argues that this brief war would influence European history for the following 20 years. A detailed, informed account for those interested in European military history.

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  Prague in Black and Gold by Peter Demetz

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  An opinionated yet serious social, political and cultural history of the city.

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  Dawdling by the Danube by Edward Enfield

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  An enjoyable bicycle jaunt by an expert in lighthearted two-wheeled travel.

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  Between The Woods & The Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In this, the second glorious instalment of 'On Foot to Constantinople', the intrepid Leigh-Fermor is deep into Central Europe, following the Danube through remote villages and wolf-ridden mountains. His writing once again hums with inexhaustible charm and vivid descriptive flair. Brilliant.

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  A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  In 1933 the precocious Leigh-Fermor set out aged eighteen to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul. This resulting account, written in the author's later years and first published to great acclaim in 1977, is an absolute wonder of descriptive prose, evoking in retrospect a world luminescent with promise. The first volume of his mysteriously unconcluded On Foot To Constantinople 'trilogy', this is a true classic.

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  Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A balanced and engaging study of the 6 million Romany gypsies of Eastern Europe. Based on personal experience, time spent among them and strong friendships, Fonseca explores their history and their future.

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  Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  An outstanding and enduring account of survival in which Frankl relays his memories of life in Auschwitz and other camps, determined to draw hope from the suffering he witnessed.

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  Romanian Furrow by Donald Hall

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  An enduring and enchanting account of life in 1930s rural Romania. Hall wandered from village to village, actively participating in rural life, and his portrayal of the characters and lifestyles he encountered is elegiac and witty.

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  Roman's Journey by Roman Halter

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A clear-eyed and astonishing account of the author's remarkable six-year journey through Nazi Europe, undertaken as a boy when he lost his family and community to the SS.

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  Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  From the man who went 'Round Ireland with a Fridge' comes another rather silly but nonetheless infectious journey, recounted in a straightforward style that is not without its charm. The title can be taken at face value...

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  Budapest: A Cultural and Literary History by Cities of the Imagination

  Price: £12.00    Add to Basket

  An excellent history of this fabulous cultural melting pot; a city of poets, writers, folk and classical musicians, and remarkable architecture.

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  Street Without A Name by Kapka Kassabova

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Part memoir, part travel wiriting, Kassabova revisits the country of her childhood as Bulgaria officially joins the EU. With an expat's irreverence and a tourist's curiosity she paints an honest and entertaining picture of a fascinating country.

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  Romania: An Illustrated History by Nicolae Klepper

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A thorough and highly readable history by a native Romanian who emigrated with his parents to America at the outbreak of WWII.

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  The Spirit of Prague by Ivan Klima

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  A fascinating collection of essays by one of the great Czech writers. Among other things Klima muses on the city of his birth, the turbulent history through which he has lived and the achievements of his contemporaries.

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  The Drowned & The Saved by Primo Levi

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Another of Levi's countless masterpieces, this reflection on the horrors of the Holocaust, and the existence he forged in its aftermath, is made all the more vital by the fact that the author took his own life shortly after completing it. An heroic attempt to make sense of the senseless.