Exit Into History

Shortly after the dramatic events of 1989, Eva Hoffman spent several months travelling through her native Poland and four other Eastern European countries, what was then Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, all of which had just undergone an historic transformation.

While making her way from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Eva Hoffman ranged from capital cities to wayside villages and sleepy provincial towns; she visited shipyards, museums, homes and the coffee-houses of the intellig...