Book details

The Last Mazurka

A Family's Tale of War, Passion, and Loss

Author: Andrew Tarnowski

The Last Mazurka

The Last Mazurka

$11.99

e-Book

About This Book

The shot Count Hieronim Tarnowski fired on his wedding night in 1914, on the eve of the First World War, was like a tocsin that sounded the doom of his ancient Polish family. When, in August 1939,...

Page Count
384
On Sale
11/26/2013

Book Details

The shot Count Hieronim Tarnowski fired on his wedding night in 1914, on the eve of the First World War, was like a tocsin that sounded the doom of his ancient Polish family. When, in August 1939, on the eve of another war, his daughter Sophie saw blood pouring down the side of her train, she felt a terrible foreboding and knew her idyllic world would be swept away. Thirty years later, when Count Hieronim's British grandson Andrew learned of the death of his mother---the beautiful, fragile, and abused Chouquette---his sense of a lost identity deepened and he set out to rediscover the world from which he came. These moments punctuate an extraordinary tale of the downfall of a once-powerful family, which in turn mirrors the twentieth-century fate of a nation ravaged by invasions and crushed by tyranny.

Before 1945, Poland, now a fledgling EU country, was an almost Tolstoyan world of wolf hunts and extravagant wealth, set alongside great poverty and a semifeudal peasantry, in a landscape of frozen fields and dark forests. Broken by war, it was reduced by Communism to drab uniformity, and a way of life was lost forever.

This world out of time is the setting for Andrew Tarnowski's memoir, The Last Mazurka, a tale of loss and exile, love and violence, wandering and longing, told with poignancy and unexpected humor, and a lingering regret.

Imprint Publisher

St. Martin's Press

ISBN

9781466858350

In The News

"Charming, melancholic and engrossing."—Kirkus Reviews

"Achingly beautiful and bittersweet, this intimate family chronicle reads like a novel."—Booklist

About the Creators

The Last Mazurka

The Last Mazurka

$11.99

e-Book