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Burning Worm
Set in Poland during the turbulent months between the birth of Solidarity and the imposition of Martial Law, Eugene Hinks, a teacher of English, finds himself witness to events that begin the destruction of communism and the reshaping of Europe. Battling with hunger, struggling with a relationship made complicated by politics, beset in the classroom by spies and police informers, Hinks runs an illegal radio monitoring service for the opposition and keeps a wary eye on the chaos around him.
This is no ordinary tale, it takes the reader inside a country at war with itself.
This book was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Author's Club Award. It is a beautifully written, vividly entertaining, yet highly informative.
This is no ordinary tale, it takes the reader inside a country at war with itself.
This book was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Author's Club Award. It is a beautifully written, vividly entertaining, yet highly informative.
228 pages, Paperback
Published September 2, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 29, 2019
This masterful work set in immediately pre-marshal law Poland paints a grim picture of state the country and its inhabitants over-coated with a pleasantly dark humour. I first visited Poland in 1990 and while the shortages by then were nothing like a decade before the decay, misery and material shortages were all too visible as were the apathy and cynicism described by character in the book. The central character, Eugene Hinks, is an out of work former lavatory attendant with a university degree who has fled the poverty of west and managed to get a job teaching English in Poland through the British Council. He doesn't like where he's come from and doesn't like where he is much more. Same circus, different clowns, but the clowns are competing to run the circus and the audience are not laughing. At one point Hinks is trying to sort out a problem with his work visa and Hinks background is unfathomable to the official "So you are a victim of capitalist economics!" to which Hicks replies "Aren't we all". Giving up on Hicks class status and reason for him being in Poland the official advises "... drink and fuck. There is nothing else for foreigners to do here anyway ... But you have been here for a year already so you know that". Written in a Hinks diary-like form the book explores the absurdities of daily life in the declining days of the PRL, observes the corruption of political life, of Solidarnosc, of society and at the same time the ability of people to live in a parallel world making the best of what they have and drinking to excess especially during prohibition. Drunks freeze to the pavement, artists compete in the censorship stakes, snow Lenins are constructed by true believers, spies spy and buying a railway ticket is an endurance test. There is something warmly human about this at time Kafkaesque tale which captures, I think, a not entirely inaccurate portrait of the time. As a Colonel explains to Hinks on a crowded train, "The fact is that professional soldiers, officers like myself, sympathise with many of the aims of Solidarnosc. We want the things they want. And we all know there is a lot wrong with this place. But Solidarnosc was riddled with trouble makers and opportunists - in fact just like the Party. They were about as bad as each other, worms burrowing into the body of the nation. We had to clear the whole lot out and start again on our terms." A great work by an English author with a good feel for Poland.
February 28, 2016
Eugene Hinks is a lavatory attendant in England in the mid-70s when he first goes to Poland, and he is there again in 1980 and 1981 during the Solidarnosc. This novel is the collected writings of Eugene Hinks, composed during these latter years, a period when he taught English at university in Krakow and Janowice. Eugene Hinks’ writings are preceded by an introduction from a Polish academic who believes Hinks’ description of the time from his perspective of an embedded Westerner lends another facet to a cubist-style portrait of Poland. The novel closes with an afterword from the same academic, which includes a letter from the Polish woman—Maria—whom Hinks had meant to marry and remove from Poland after Jaruzelski had imposed martial law and disbanded both the Party and Solidarnosc at the close of 1981.
The novel’s frame—especially considering the solemn academese of the Prof Dr S. Mroz of the Jagiellanonian University of Krakow, which alludes also to Hinks’ writings having already been collected and printed by a German scholar—suggests a high-brow pastiche, a la Borges or Nabokov. It would appear that the ostensible journal jottings of an English language teacher in Krakow and Janowice who “sported shoulder length hair, a drooping mustache – in winter a black beard – bell-bottom trousers, a blue/grey RAF greatcoat … [and was] accompanied everywhere by an enormous old guitar”—are going to be a humorous account of a sort of sad-sack scholar. Instead, but no less effective in the long run, these jottings are earnest reportage, by turns somber, bemused, exasperated, objective, affectionate, and paranoid. There is humor throughout the volatile shift in tones, like a steady back beat, but it is gallows humor, dark and grim.
In episodes that are roughly chronological, Hinks covers events as he experiences them from October 1980 to December 1981. The chaotic exhilaration of the Solidarnosc defying the party leads to a mix of emotions in the Polish people, all of them tamped down by the prospect of Soviet reprisal. As the Solidarnosc continues to prevail without reprisal from the Party or the Soviets, there should be some elation but the life of the average Pole is still unaffected; he or she is still a worm, still enduring a dreary daily round of long queues for short supplies. By mid-1981, Hinks is aware of plotki (rumor, gossip) that the Party has emptied the jails of 23,000 criminals, preparation it is said for the military to fill them with political dissidents, i.e., members of Solidarnosc.
When it does come to pass that the Polish military enacts a coup d’état—“Poland invades itself,” as Hinks sardonically puts it—Hinks has already fled to England, unsure he will be able to survive under the new Jaruzelski regime. He does write of returning at least once to Poland during the period of martial law, but his story appears to end with Hinks neither here nor there, neither in England or Poland, inhabiting, instead, desperate dreams of some sort of transcendence, a perfection. In 1999, Prof Dr S. Mroz resurrects Hinks—about whom there is no information after the mid-80s—and though Hinks is no longer mortal, he continues to exist, perfectly, in this narrative.
This short, episodic novel does a splendid job of capturing in a varied and panoramic fashion the crazy quilt of experiences available not only to Hinks but to all Poles during this time. Hinks early on compares George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia) to John Reed (Ten Days That Shook the World), and he concludes that he is more like Orwell, unable to clearly see the larger social and political picture for all the immediate chaos, which in turn makes him distrust the hyperbolic ability of Reed to instantly understand and grasp the significance of events as they unfolded.
In short “chapters” Hinks sometimes employs an impressionistic style, with a series of terse sentences and stand-alone phrases; other chapters are more in a narrative mode, with dialog and authorial reflection. Episodes include the obligatory queueing, encounters with bureaucrats, Solidarnosc takeover of the University’s English department, trainloads of Soviet tanks rolling past, a melted dedicatory statue of Lenin made of snow, rampant anti-Semitism embodied in the wafer thin pastille of human soap, the role of the censor to make artists feel themselves important, rampant alcoholism in workers and poets, transcriptions of BBC broadcasts for Solidarnosc agents, the earnest striving of Solidarnosc bigwigs in Gdansk, Polish cinema and Wajda’s Man of Marble and Man of Steel, and a mentally retarded child’s triumphant descent on a playground slide outside Hinks’ housing block. Woven throughout, and especially in the last third of the book is a very muted love story with fellow teacher, art restoration expert Maria. The sad failure of these two to connect despite Hinks’ efforts betrays the failure of the West to understand and act appropriately—politically and humanely—with Poland itself.
My summative blurb: This is a well-told, well-shaped novel, with personal and political resonances that continue to echo even after the book is closed.
The novel’s frame—especially considering the solemn academese of the Prof Dr S. Mroz of the Jagiellanonian University of Krakow, which alludes also to Hinks’ writings having already been collected and printed by a German scholar—suggests a high-brow pastiche, a la Borges or Nabokov. It would appear that the ostensible journal jottings of an English language teacher in Krakow and Janowice who “sported shoulder length hair, a drooping mustache – in winter a black beard – bell-bottom trousers, a blue/grey RAF greatcoat … [and was] accompanied everywhere by an enormous old guitar”—are going to be a humorous account of a sort of sad-sack scholar. Instead, but no less effective in the long run, these jottings are earnest reportage, by turns somber, bemused, exasperated, objective, affectionate, and paranoid. There is humor throughout the volatile shift in tones, like a steady back beat, but it is gallows humor, dark and grim.
In episodes that are roughly chronological, Hinks covers events as he experiences them from October 1980 to December 1981. The chaotic exhilaration of the Solidarnosc defying the party leads to a mix of emotions in the Polish people, all of them tamped down by the prospect of Soviet reprisal. As the Solidarnosc continues to prevail without reprisal from the Party or the Soviets, there should be some elation but the life of the average Pole is still unaffected; he or she is still a worm, still enduring a dreary daily round of long queues for short supplies. By mid-1981, Hinks is aware of plotki (rumor, gossip) that the Party has emptied the jails of 23,000 criminals, preparation it is said for the military to fill them with political dissidents, i.e., members of Solidarnosc.
When it does come to pass that the Polish military enacts a coup d’état—“Poland invades itself,” as Hinks sardonically puts it—Hinks has already fled to England, unsure he will be able to survive under the new Jaruzelski regime. He does write of returning at least once to Poland during the period of martial law, but his story appears to end with Hinks neither here nor there, neither in England or Poland, inhabiting, instead, desperate dreams of some sort of transcendence, a perfection. In 1999, Prof Dr S. Mroz resurrects Hinks—about whom there is no information after the mid-80s—and though Hinks is no longer mortal, he continues to exist, perfectly, in this narrative.
This short, episodic novel does a splendid job of capturing in a varied and panoramic fashion the crazy quilt of experiences available not only to Hinks but to all Poles during this time. Hinks early on compares George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia) to John Reed (Ten Days That Shook the World), and he concludes that he is more like Orwell, unable to clearly see the larger social and political picture for all the immediate chaos, which in turn makes him distrust the hyperbolic ability of Reed to instantly understand and grasp the significance of events as they unfolded.
In short “chapters” Hinks sometimes employs an impressionistic style, with a series of terse sentences and stand-alone phrases; other chapters are more in a narrative mode, with dialog and authorial reflection. Episodes include the obligatory queueing, encounters with bureaucrats, Solidarnosc takeover of the University’s English department, trainloads of Soviet tanks rolling past, a melted dedicatory statue of Lenin made of snow, rampant anti-Semitism embodied in the wafer thin pastille of human soap, the role of the censor to make artists feel themselves important, rampant alcoholism in workers and poets, transcriptions of BBC broadcasts for Solidarnosc agents, the earnest striving of Solidarnosc bigwigs in Gdansk, Polish cinema and Wajda’s Man of Marble and Man of Steel, and a mentally retarded child’s triumphant descent on a playground slide outside Hinks’ housing block. Woven throughout, and especially in the last third of the book is a very muted love story with fellow teacher, art restoration expert Maria. The sad failure of these two to connect despite Hinks’ efforts betrays the failure of the West to understand and act appropriately—politically and humanely—with Poland itself.
My summative blurb: This is a well-told, well-shaped novel, with personal and political resonances that continue to echo even after the book is closed.
January 3, 2019
Fantastic read!
September 24, 2021
I read this book a few years ago and elements stayed with me. This year I have re- read it.
This book is a very vivid, yet personal account of Eugene Hinks in Poland when The Polish crisis of 1980 was associated with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement in the Polish People's Republic, thus challenging the rule of the Polish United Workers' Party and Poland's alignment with the Soviet Union.
In spite of all the mass deprivation, which is very clear in this book, Carl Tighe manages to bring gentle humour and wit into the experience of personal survival in Poland at this time.
His characters are alive, they are real and fully engageable. I had heard the “April Fool” extract in isolation on the radio and can remember how believable Eugene was although, It’s perplexing how such a terrible period of time can expose the protagonist’s unique peace and dry humour from the page to the reader, but it works.
Often the most challenging of experiences helps us to sort out who we really are in times like this and Tighe exposes Eugene through humour, personal tragedy and “want “in the truest sense, which must have been unbearably stressful. The people’s extreme misery is crafted superbly and I will never again look at a jar of honey without thinking of this book, of the people of Poland at this time and of Eugene. I will savour the sweetness, taste the hardship endured by so many and appreciate the availability we have today.
In spite of the relentless hunger, this period of time also held an odd feeling of security, of continuity, as at least you knew that each day would definitely be as bad as yesterday and ambition was to ambitious to contemplate, then there is less stress. There was NO rat race to compete in, nor contemplate, everyone was in the same situation, no one had anything, you didn’t compare, clothes, kettles nor cars, if you had an item break you fixed it, if you couldn’t fix it then maybe someone else could, if they couldn’t fix it, then you didn’t have it anymore, simples.
What replaced competition was fear, it was a very different one from that which we hold today. The fear was that of conspiracy, collusion, lack of privacy, careless talk, the fear of intercepted mail, or worse no mail, and the fear of telephone conversations being overheard. His conspiracy fear must come from the authors experience in Poland, no one can manifest that from anything other than experience. I found myself wondering what the Eugene of today would have made of the internet and our mobile phones, we only have to mention something these days and whoosh up it comes for sale on our mobiles.
If Tighe threw away the evidence of those days out of fear, then it is fortunate indeed that he recorded what he witnessed and felt and made it accessible through Eugene for us all. The faithful honesty with which he presents the real life scenarios here have been written through genuine heartfelt experience, it has become a reliable historical account of the period with sensitive accuracy and a hint of sentimentality for the people of Poland at this time. The Burning worm will weave its way into the minds of those who never witnessed it as it takes its place rightly so in the history books. It is not a weighty tomb, but one of considerable might.
This book is a very vivid, yet personal account of Eugene Hinks in Poland when The Polish crisis of 1980 was associated with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement in the Polish People's Republic, thus challenging the rule of the Polish United Workers' Party and Poland's alignment with the Soviet Union.
In spite of all the mass deprivation, which is very clear in this book, Carl Tighe manages to bring gentle humour and wit into the experience of personal survival in Poland at this time.
His characters are alive, they are real and fully engageable. I had heard the “April Fool” extract in isolation on the radio and can remember how believable Eugene was although, It’s perplexing how such a terrible period of time can expose the protagonist’s unique peace and dry humour from the page to the reader, but it works.
Often the most challenging of experiences helps us to sort out who we really are in times like this and Tighe exposes Eugene through humour, personal tragedy and “want “in the truest sense, which must have been unbearably stressful. The people’s extreme misery is crafted superbly and I will never again look at a jar of honey without thinking of this book, of the people of Poland at this time and of Eugene. I will savour the sweetness, taste the hardship endured by so many and appreciate the availability we have today.
In spite of the relentless hunger, this period of time also held an odd feeling of security, of continuity, as at least you knew that each day would definitely be as bad as yesterday and ambition was to ambitious to contemplate, then there is less stress. There was NO rat race to compete in, nor contemplate, everyone was in the same situation, no one had anything, you didn’t compare, clothes, kettles nor cars, if you had an item break you fixed it, if you couldn’t fix it then maybe someone else could, if they couldn’t fix it, then you didn’t have it anymore, simples.
What replaced competition was fear, it was a very different one from that which we hold today. The fear was that of conspiracy, collusion, lack of privacy, careless talk, the fear of intercepted mail, or worse no mail, and the fear of telephone conversations being overheard. His conspiracy fear must come from the authors experience in Poland, no one can manifest that from anything other than experience. I found myself wondering what the Eugene of today would have made of the internet and our mobile phones, we only have to mention something these days and whoosh up it comes for sale on our mobiles.
If Tighe threw away the evidence of those days out of fear, then it is fortunate indeed that he recorded what he witnessed and felt and made it accessible through Eugene for us all. The faithful honesty with which he presents the real life scenarios here have been written through genuine heartfelt experience, it has become a reliable historical account of the period with sensitive accuracy and a hint of sentimentality for the people of Poland at this time. The Burning worm will weave its way into the minds of those who never witnessed it as it takes its place rightly so in the history books. It is not a weighty tomb, but one of considerable might.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews