Warsaw Boy: A Memoir of a Wartime Childhood

Description

The remarkable true story of the horrors and occasional joys of a boy soldier in war-torn Poland In the autumn of 1944, 16-year-old Andrew Borowiec, wearing two left shoes and bleeding from numerous shrapnel wounds, limped into a German prisoner-of-war camp. Andrew was one of the youngest boy soldiers who fought in the Warsaw Rising, witnessing the worst street fighting since Stalingrad. Wounded in the leg, he emerged from the sewers and gave himself up, taking a chance as a prisoner of war. In the prison camp he secretly kept a diary on toilet paper, and this became the basis of his extraordinary tale of survival and defiance.

Andrew Borowiec was born at Lodz in Poland in 1928. At fifteen he joined the Home Army, the main Polish resistance during the Second World War, and fought in the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising. After the war he left Poland and attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Cyprus with his English wife, Juliet.

This is a surprisingly subtle, well observed autobiography, beautifully paced...Borowiec's war is learning experience and part of the charm of the book is learning with him...All this is described with self effacing gusto. -- Roger Boyes * The Times * A timely, angry, terribly moving and drily amusing account of an especially dark period in Poland's often tragic history * Telegraph * This account of the Warsaw Uprising is both harrowing and full of human and even humorous touches . . . The result is an important addition to our understanding of what was happening in Poland during the war years * The Tablet * In this packed, wise memoir, Borowiec describes a journey that is nothing less than an odyssey through the most harrowing of circumstances. Given the fate of many of his fellow Poles, that there was a happy ending for Borowiec is remarkable * The National * Borowiec is at his best when describing his own experiences - his excitement at throwing his first grenade; crawling through the sewers to move from one sector to another; and the surreal moments when normal life seemed to be continuing amid the carnage . . . Most striking, perhaps, amid all the horror, is just how exciting he found it all * Literary Review * A story of defiance, bravery and survival. Warsaw Boy is a real-life Boy's Adventure Story - Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones -- Shirley Conran A highly readable and engaging first-hand account of the tribulations of a country for which Britain went to war in 1939, and about which most of us still know far too little -- Roger Moorhouse, author of 'The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin' An engaging memoir of wartime childhood . . . It is the fresh, often humerous voice of Borowiec that stands out throughout. Warsaw Boy is valuable for the story it tells of what a boy made of the war and what the war made of him * TLS * A uniquely personal and harrowing description of one of the most tragic events in the country's twentieth century history * Cyprus Mail * Hugely engaging. For all the horrors that Borowiec describes, his is an affectionate, wryly amusing account puntuated by episodes of warmth and humanity. Excellent * Financial Times *