SOURCE: Sherwood, Peter. “The Other Europe.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4781 (18 November 1994): 21.

In the following review, Sherwood examines the bleak themes and outlook of Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light.

It is now five years since those faces on the television screen, ecstatic as the Berlin Wall fell and as the party men took their final curtain. Not all that has followed in the Europe can be explained in terms of the re-emergence of age-old fault-lines; in particular, the radical political changes achieved without armed conflict in the north and west of the region have been too readily seen as proof of an organic return to the body of Europe. This appealing notion doesn't pay attention to the legacy of vast areas of postwar history. The remains or return of the former nomenklatura in many walks of life is only the most obvious evidence of continuity with...