The Odyssey and Dr. Novak: A Memoir
May 2018 · Simon and Schuster
Ebook
224
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
One summer afternoon in northern England in 1946, when Ann Colley was a child, she met a man from Czechoslovakia named Dr. Novak. This encounter launched her lifelong fascination with Central and Eastern Europe, one that resulted in her spending two years, in 1995 and 2000, teaching at universities in Poland and Ukraine. In The Odyssey and Dr. Novak, Colley records personal experiences, interactions with colleagues, and descriptions of the landscape, creating a composite portrait of these countries at a time when each is struggling to chart its course after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. She recalls moments that are disturbing, absurd, discordant, frustrating, humorous, and endearing—a missing parrot flying in through the window; a robber on a train threatening her life; clouds of smoke from Chernobyl hanging over Kiev. Colley’s journey ends with her return to the figure of Dr. Novak when she searches in the archives of the Harvard Divinity School Library for letters sent from Prague in 1945—letters which, just like her memoir, speak of a past that pursues the present.
About the author
Ann C. Colley is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University College of New York in Buffalo. She has written extensively on nineteenth-century British literature and culture and has published with presses including Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, the University of Georgia Press, Macmillan, Ashgate, Palgrave, and the Cambridge University Press. She has taught abroad on Fulbright Fellowships in Poland and Ukraine. With Irving Massey she has traveled throughout South America, Central America, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco, Africa, Cape Verde, New Zealand, Armenia, Belarus, Hungary, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Ukraine. Always nostalgic for the landscape of home, she often returns to England, where she spent the first thirteen years of her life. In the summers she lives in the wilderness of Nova Scotia. She can be found online at Ann-C-Colley.com.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
