Matthew Parker

Partisan Account

Warsaw Boy: A Memoir of a Wartime Childhood

By

Viking 367pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

As Soviet forces entered Nazi-occupied Poland in the spring of 1944, a joke was doing the rounds in Warsaw. The Archangel Gabriel drops in and asks the first man he meets whom he hates most: the Russians or the Germans? The Pole replies, ‘When?’

‘We were not exactly spoilt for choice,’ writes Andrew Borowiec in this engaging memoir. ‘One side had given us Katyn,’ where thousands of Polish officers were shot by the Soviets, ‘and the other Auschwitz.’ Antipathy towards both, he says, was ‘almost a way of life’.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • From the Archive: Martyn Bedford on Ian McEwan's 'Atonement' ,
    • In 'Silenced Voices' reports the ongoing story of the human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been… ,
    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    Follow Us