dark, sarcastic, funny - just like the Eastern Europeans I know and lived among.
The story told by the Bulgarian bear was my favorite and I thought best illustrated times and people of recent past and the new generation trying to get a grasp on how the oppression even happened.

A series of fables from different animals in different parts of ex-socialist Eastern Europe, this was really good. Each chapter tells the history of a different country, and is used to focus in on an aspect of Communist/socialism as it was manifested in that country, and how the places are dealing with their history. The animals are often symbolic, for example a mouse tells a rat about how meekness of the Czech people helped lead to to the culture where anyone could be an informant, or a Raven witnesses a murder/suicide of a politician (aside, what is it about ravens that make then synonymous with death in pretty much every culture?). I know little to nothing to communism outside of Russia, and found this both informative and interesting. The voices of the characters did tend to merge into one when they were reflecting on how to remember the communist era, but they were distinct enough for the "history" part, and the merging may even have been deliberate in terms of 'Communism thought everyone was identical', I don't know.

I've seen a lot of comparisons with Animal Farm, because you know, animals and communism, but while AF is about how the system can be corrupted, this is more meditative, and mostly focussed on how to remember an era that still has significant influence, but many people don't want to face up to it.

Personal highlight was the mole's understanding of Berlin via bananas.

7.5/10