FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, Bulgarian Gypsies trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, after the fall of communism. they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But, even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance.
In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski takes us from eastern Europe to London, Greece and Cuba, uncovering the stories of people whose lives haven't quite caught up with their countries' political turns: the families who mourn for the days they raised bears alongside their children; the women who take care of Stalin's childhood home in Georgia; the villagers who turned their homes into hobbit holes for tourism in Poland.
Humorous and heartbreaking in equal measure, Dancing Bears reminds us how journalism can change the way we see the world, the way we think and feel about people and things.