A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism: Fables From a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven
Article Summary and Author Biography
Of all the genres employed to explore the long night of Eastern European communism, fables have not, until now, been one of them.
Of all the genres employed to explore the long night of Eastern European communism, fables have not, until now, been one of them. Drakulic's book is a little like David Sedaris' Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk as serious history. A mouse, a parrot, and a string of other creatures each tell a story about one of the Eastern European states. The parrot describes Yugoslav President Marshal Tito's life on the Brijuni Islands; the cat, Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski's agonized reflections on his 1981 decision to crush Solidarity; the mole, the events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall; the pig, the effects of the Hungarian ruler János Kádár's "goulash communism"; and so on. Drakulic is not trying to present the entire communist experience. Rather, she means to let a few apparently random, if significant, facets -- embellished by sardonic fictionalized observations -- give readers a sense of the foibles, fears, and absurdities of life back then.
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