Decades ago, Bernard Wasserstein set out to uncover the hidden past of Krakowiec – ‘a little place you’ve never heard of’. This shtetl, forty miles west of Lviv, was where his family originated. His new book, A Small Town in Ukraine: The place we came from, the place we went back to, traces the arc of history across centuries of religious and political conflict. Wasserstein uncovers the story of Krakowiec and of his family’s intimate, tortured relationship with it. In his lecture, he will introduce the book that, half-seriously, he calls ‘an autobiography of the period before I was born.’
The book is available at Toppings and Blackwell’s in Edinburgh, as well as other bookshops in the city, or via an online retailer. If you bring your own copy to the event, Bernard Wasserstein will be delighted to sign it for you.
Bernard Wasserstein was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Scotland. After studying at Oxford, he taught at universities in Britain, the USA, Israel, and Germany. A former professor of history at the Universities of Glasgow and Chicago, he is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. His books include The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (which won the Crime Writers Association’s Golden Dagger prize for non-fiction) and On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War (awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize). He now lives in Amsterdam with his wife, son and three cats.
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society 