This book traces the origins of the legend that Jewish musicians in concentration camps were forced to play a Tango of Death at the gas chambers and shows how in this legend the actual history is hidden, distorted, or even lost altogether.

"Yuri Vynnychuk's novel Tango of Death is a literary masterpiece about the magic of pre-war Lviv." Dariusz Nowacki in Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)

Mikhail Baranovskiy weaves a remarkably poignant story of loyalty, betrayal, honor, hope, love, and the effects of enforced mediocrity on talent, based on true events from World War II. Vienna, Austria, 1932. A violin virtuoso and musical genius, Jacob Mund's quick ascent to conducting the Vienna Philharmonic isn't too surprising. With a successful career, adoration and praise from all corners, and a beautiful fiancee, Mund has everything going for him - but that soon changes. With German occupation leading to the total ban of Jewish composers in Vienna, Mund accepts an offer from the Lwow Orchestra and relocates with his now-pregnant wife, Sophia, and a talented musician and close friend, Shmulik. But misfortune catches up with them. Mund's happy days in Lwow (Poland, today Lviv, Ukraine), come to an abrupt and unfortunate end when the Germans take over. His Jewish parents are robbed and shot on the streets, and he is shipped off to the Janowska concentration camp along with his wife, his daughter, and the other Lwow musicians. By a lucky twist of fate and with the help of an unexpected ally, his daughter Shera and his friend Shmulik escape the hell of the concentration camp, allowing them a chance to begin life anew. Mund is not so fortunate. Baranovskiy weaves an incredibly powerful and haunting tale that captures the horrors of Jewish persecution at the height of the World War II. If you enjoyed Born Survivors, The Lost and All But My Life, then you need to get your hands on this literary masterpiece. A famous writer, playwright, and screenwriter, Mikhail Baranovskiy has been recognized with many literary awards and has authored various children and adult books, as well as numerous television series, including Volkov's Hour, Girls, The Sisters Korolev, and Antique Dealer. Scroll to the top of the page and click the "Buy Now" button to get a copy today!

A collection mimicking the great writers of literary history, with each writer's name rearranged as a title, creating the subject for a parody rendered in the author's style.

From its earliest manifestations on the street corners of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires to its ascendancy as a global cultural form, tango has continually exceeded the confines of the dance floor or the music hall. In Tango Lessons, scholars from Latin America and the United States explore tango's enduring vitality. The interdisciplinary group of contributors—including specialists in dance, music, anthropology, linguistics, literature, film, and fine art—take up a broad range of topics. Among these are the productive tensions between tradition and experimentation in tango nuevo, representations of tango in film and contemporary art, and the role of tango in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Taken together, the essays show that tango provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on Argentina's social, cultural, and intellectual history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Contributors. Esteban Buch, Oscar Conde, Antonio Gómez, Morgan James Luker, Carolyn Merritt, Marilyn G. Miller, Fernando Rosenberg, Alejandro Susti

Death Tango traces the Middle East dynamic back to the events of March 27–29, 2002. March 27, Passover Eve, witnessed the most bloody and traumatic Arab terrorist attack in Israel’s history, the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya. On March 28, an Arab League summit in Beirut adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, the most far-reaching Arab attempt to set parameters for ending the Israel-Arab conflict. The next day, Israel invaded and reoccupied the West Bank in Operation Defensive Shield. Alpher illustrates the interaction between these three critical events and depicts the key personalities—politicians, generals, and a star journalist—involved on all sides. It moves from a suicide bombing to the deliberations of Arab leaders; from the Israel Prime Minister’s Office—where Ariel Sharon fulminated against Yasser Arafat—to Washington, where the United States fumbled and misunderstood the dynamics at work; and on to the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers won a bloody military battle but Israel lost the media battle of public opinion. Based on extensive interviews and his deep personal knowledge, Alpher analyzes the three days in late March 2002 as a catalyst of extensive change in the Middle East, concluding that Arabs and Israelis are dancing a kind of “death tango.”

It was a new skill... One that might change the world. What could a person do who could track empathy? His friends call him Lion, he is the first of his kind. Some describe it as emotional foresight, but really, he can see cultural trends before they emerge. What he didn’t expect was for Big Pharma to come calling. In 2025, technology has made massive leaps forward. Not every group wants to use it for good. Artic Pharmaceuticals has a new drug and a bad idea. They call on Lion, because he is the key to getting the formula they need. But when he starts to sense their hidden agenda, will they take drastic action? Then Lion discovers a decapitated human head... Is he being hunted? Can he stop a global disaster? You’ll love this edge-of-your seat cyberpunk thriller, because it will keep you turning the pages late into the night. Get it now.

The Tango of Gossip is a play in which you are invited to spend one day in Ramizs cash-only grocery store. You will have a chance to meet a number of his customers and friends. The play starts with Ramiz opening his store early in the morning and ends with him closing it in the evening. The play is in six acts; it reflects life as Ramiz sees it, namely, that it is a series of random events punctuated by actions and decision, both minor and major, that are made by individuals who happen to be exposed to these events. This collective process of actions and reactions by the many masquerades itself as a grand plan for each, thus giving us the individual satisfaction that we are important and are in control of our destiny.

Even seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the commemorative cultures surrounding the War and the Holocaust in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe are anything but fixed. The fierce debates on how to deal with the past among the newly constituted nation states in these regions have already received much attention by scholars in cultural and memory studies. The present volume posits that literature as a medium can help us understand the shifting attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe in recent years. These shifts point to new commemorative cultures shaping up ‘after memory’. Contemporary literary representations of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe do not merely extend or replace older practices of remembrance and testimony, but reflect on these now defunct or superseded narratives. New narratives of remembrance are conditioned by a fundamentally new social and political context, one that emerged from the devaluation of socialist commemorative rituals and as a response to the loss of private and family memory narratives. The volume offers insights into the diverse literatures of Eastern Europe and their ways of depicting the area’s contested heritage.

Few people realize that being Gypsy in 1943 Poland was as dangerous and frightening as being a Jew. It is guessed that between five hundred thousand to one million Gypsies perished during the Holocaust, the Porraimos (the devouring) as the Gypsies called it. Gypsy Spirit is the story of fifteen year-old Zilka Sucuri, a Gypsy girl who is thrust into the horrors of the Holocaust. Her life of traveling from town to town, singing and dancing the Gypsy way comes to an unconscionable stop when a SS death squad shoot every man, woman, and child in her kumpania. If she had not literally been up a tree, she would have been among those lying dead in a mass grave. Her lungo drom (the long road) takes her across Poland, Austria, and Germany in a driving struggle to help an American pilot return safely to his unit so he can return to bomb the many concentration, work, and death camps all across Poland and Germany. Her efforts reveal the truths of Belzec, the challenges of the partisans, and the burning desire to survive to be a living witness of what truly happened to the non-Aryans of Hitler’s Germany. Gypsy Spirit is a story of the driving spirit of a Gypsy girl, who took it upon herself to document the truth. Her strength and determination brings to light a story of magnanimity and the fears and atrocities such a Gypsy girl might have lived through.