A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

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He soon discovered for himself how low much Polish pay was and how expensive things like coffee and beer were. There was an altercation in the beginning and throughout the novel about Islamaphobia yet the author never seems to recognise how much he is able to get away with.

With regard to learning Polish, his back was against the wall from the get-go due to his mindset: “There are no two ways about it, it will be a hard language to learn.Therefore, if you are interested in Poland and want to read the authors' memoirs of his time there, I would recommend you to give it a go. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. This, along with more extreme examples (bringing beer into a nunnery, trespassing into conferences, and using his friend's favourite things as ashtrays), paints the author in a bad light no matter how fondly you look upon him. His task was to peel an interminable number of potatoes, then to chip them with a gadget, then to do the complicated work of de-boning kilos of cod.

An engaging romp through Polish culture, with a resonant political message of the importance of interacting with other cultures and preserving our ties with Europe.Many Poles do speak English, but some of the English dialogues between Ben and Polea strike me as being too sophisticated to be either uttered or understood by the Poles. One would have expected the former to highlight how Poland differs from England, but, in fact, they are disappointingly deficient in that respect.

Maybe it's my liberal snowflake beliefs but I feel like there should've been a greater discussion of privilege in a novel about immigrants, status quo and persona. He seems to like Poland in the whole, but it doesn’t seem to change him much, which if he had, I would have found more interesting. In accordance with The Post Office, the last recommended date for Christmas posting is 18th December (2nd Class) and 20th December (First class). In January 2005, I met a Polish exchange student whilst studying at The Nottingham Trent University, UK. Traces of insight were also promised, but making vague statements and then alluding to some deeper meaning is not insightful, at least not to me.I don't see why it was necessary for the author to spend so much time detailing his smoking and drinking habits or describing his daily hangovers with such vividity. I wasn't surprised to see the mixed opinions; I myself found some of the book's content questionable and expected there might be others who agreed with me. So how should he expect us to take his opinion seriously when he does not even take it seriously enough himself?