One of the most entertaining books I’ve read this year – OK, the most entertaining book I’ve read this year (what happened to humor in America?) – is Ben Aitken’s A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland. As the title suggests, Aitken is English and a lover of the unobvious. You could say he’s following in the footsteps of all those British writers who lived abroad – Freya Stark, Gerald Brenan, Lawrence Durrell – and immersed themselves in foreign cultures. But he isn’t, really. He’s much more amusing than they were, while still being insightful, and showering unromanticized affection on the people he’s describing. His is an original, honest, irreverent voice, and his book is a fine addition to the short stack of books that try to explain Poland and the Poles to the English-speaking world. It, and the audiobook, were released yesterday here in the U.S., and I kinda wish, to help it along, our president had involved Poland instead of Ukraine in his villainy.
