2007 AAASS/Orbis Books Prize Winner
The AAASS/Orbis Books Prize for Polish Studies, sponsored by the Orbis Books, Ltd. in London, is presented annually for an outstanding English-language book on any aspect of Polish affairs.
Marci Shore
The 2007 AAASS/Orbis Books Prize is awarded to two scholars:
- Marci Shore, for Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, published by Yale University Press
- Geneviève Zubrzycki, for The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland, published by the University of Chicago Press
Marci Shore’s magisterial account of a generation of Warsaw literati tells one of the most important Polish stories of the 20th century. This thoroughly researched and compellingly narrated book is full of revealing detail about a cohort of intellectuals who shaped much of Poland’s post-war history. Shore traces a group of artists and writers whose life and work were all defined by their relationship to Marxism. By bridging the temporal boundaries in 20th century Polish history, she demonstrates the continuities in Polish intellectual life even in the face of the disjuncture of the Soviet imposition of communism. Moreover, she gracefully integrates a discussion of what it meant to be an assimilated Jew in modern Poland into her analysis.
