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Reviewer needed: ‘Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West’ by Agata Pyzik

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By CentreForMedicalHumanities.org Research Team | Last verified: September 2026

Research Summary: Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West

Category: Academic Book / Cultural Criticism
Author: Agata Pyzik
Publisher: Zero Books
Publication Year: 2014
Key Themes: Post-Cold War European cultural divisions, neoliberalism, mass migration, Socialist Realism, Eastern European identity, alternative modernity concepts
Scope: Critical examination of Eastern-Western European stereotypes and “secret histories” beyond caricature.
Intellectual Approach: Refuses both nostalgic Ostalgia and assimilationist narratives, reclaiming concept of “Other Europe.”
Review Opportunity: Maximum 1,000–1,500 words; expressions of interest welcome from medical humanities scholars; contact reviews editor with qualifications.

Agata Pyzik‘s timely and controversial book ‘Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West’ (Zero Books, 2014) is available for review. Expressions of interest are welcome from across the medical humanities.

’24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound – the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for ‘the new Berlin’ for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the ‘West’). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and ‘self-colonisation’, the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of ‘the idea of communism’ – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the ‘good old days’ and the equally desperate desire to become a ‘normal part of Europe’, reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe.’

If you would like to review ‘Poor but Sexy’ (approximately 1,000-1,500 words maximum in length), then please email our reviews editor with a short explanation of why you are well placed to review the book.

 

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