The waves of revolutionary fervour that have swept over Europe from the French Revolution in 1793 through the Republican uprisings throughout Europe in 1848 to the Paris Commune in 1870-1, the Russian Revolutions in 1917, the Spanish Civil War in 1936-9 up to the various events and revolts East and West of the late 1960s seem just about all splashed out at our century-end. Warsawianka is a very perfectly written bittersweet novella that in an amusing and delicate way touches on some of the hopes and failures produced in their wake.


A girl brought up in a ‘revolutionary’ family tries to unravel a particular small mystery of her background, a song heard on a battered tape of protest songs; the Warsawianka.


As that mystery unravels so does an essential strand of the immediate European past, producing a thoughtful picture of our century; a large panoramic mosaic, but one subtly created from the little pebbles of everyday life; the everyday life of political activists but also of teenage girls and boys. A funny and thoughtful book, a kind of late gift from and to ‘the generation of ’68’.

‘The Movement, which included at most about fifteen faithfuls, one of whom was an old survivor of the Third International who had just missed meeting Lenin, was at a standstill; but Christian had great hopes and spoke of the revolution in the future perfect and of the Communism we would establish once it had taken place in the simple future.’ p9