Joe's War - My Father Decoded: A Daughter's Search for

Joe's War - My Father Decoded

by  Annette Kobak

Description:
'It didn't occur to me to ask my father as I grew up why he had nothing from his past before the war - no pictures of himself when young, no family photographs, no mementos of any kind. He was a man without a past, and I failed to notice.' Annette Kobak's father, born in Czechoslovakia, escaped as a nineteen-year-old from German-occupied Poland in the spring of 1940 and joined the Polish army in France, ending up intercepting morse code in a top secret unit in London. This, and very much more, she discovered only half a century later when she started, with his help, unravelling his past after the collapse of the Soviet union. This mesmerising book is at once a daughter's search for an understanding of her father and a search to understand - through her father's life - the Czech and Polish experience of the war.

What the papers say:
'As well as being a meditation on the way that stories which once seemed frozen behind the iron curtain are now thawing back to life, JOE'S WAR is also a frank account of the impossibility of ever fully realising that your parents once knew a time that did not include you.' GUARDIAN '...startling reading...the description of his escape across a frozen river with a grenade in his coat pocket, being shot at by Russians, is heart-stoppingly exciting...It is gripping and studded with humour...[an] unusual and complex book.' Aileen Reid, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'This is a fascinating and enjoyable book. Eminently readable, it rambles engagingly and instructively through many spheres, private and public, leaving one with haunting reflections.' Adam Zamoyski, SUNDAY TIMES 'Annette Kobak is an accomplished travel writer...a very detailed and well-researched book...and engaging piece of writing' MORNING STAR 'An absorbing and beautifully written chronicle of an individual life left battered by larger forces.' FAMILY HISTORY 'This is a remarkable story well told.' CONTEMPORARY REVIEW

Author's biography:
For the past twelve years Annette Kobak has reviewed regularly for the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement, and for five years has presented the BBC Radio 4 series The Art of Travel.

Added by the Seller on Thu 17 Feb 2011 21:11:10 (GMT)