Joanna Hempel, author
Writer and weaver of great history
Stories of war and love from 20th Century Eastern Europe.
Before writing novels about Eastern Europe, Joanna Millicer Hempel was a successful playwright for young Australians. Born in Britain as the daughter of the Polish-born pilot and aircraft designer, Henry Millicer, she was educated in Australia.
Chronicles of War and Love was inspired by her family's survival amid three wars and a revolution.
Joanna Hempel: the writer at work
Stories from World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Polish-Soviet War, and World War II
Chronicles of War and Love (in Polish, Księgi wojny i miłości)
Chronicles of War and Love is a stirring, fictionalised saga, based on real historical events in Joanna Hempel's extended family, noted in a family journal. Originally published by Znak in 2022, it is being published in a new edition in 2026.
The trilogy is being celebrated as "a contemporary response to the great titles in Polish literature". The three novels span across generations as Hempel's family navigates first the collapse of the Russian Empire, beginning with World War 1, then the turbulent years between the wars, moving into World War 2, and the Cold War.
Volume 1 | Wanda (book cover, Polish edition, 2026)
Volume 2 | Jerzy i Wanda (book cover, Polish edition, 2026)
Volume 3 HENRY 1939 - 1950 will be published in English in early 2027, and in late 2027 in Polish. It covers the author's father, Henry Millicer, in WWII, as a Polish pilot during the fall of France, and in the RAF.
The Polish version of Volume 1, titled Księgi Wojny i miłości, Wanda, was first published by Znak in 2022.
The English version of Volume 1 WANDA was published in 2022.
Reviews — Chronicles of War and Love
"Joanna Hempel's novels through their structure and language, are a contemporary response to the great titles in Polish literature, works on a par with the Orzeszkowa's On the Niemen and Dąbrowska's Nights and Days".
~ Piotr Dobrolęcki, Editor-in-Chief, KSIĄŻKI/BOOKS
“Great stories demand great narration. They are nothing without full-blooded heroes who love, yearn, fear and fight. Joanna Hempel does not allow her ancestors to fade in photograph albums. She shows them as they are tested, weaving their trials into an huge of European history. If you want to understand the Eastern Front during the First World War — this is the only way! It is impossible to stop reading."
~ Tomasz Kosiorek, Polish Radio
"The author, from the first page to the last, informs us how much is still to be said about Polish/ Russian/ Lithuanian relations. Hempel's novels reveal the perseverance and struggle in the name of Independent Poland."~ Paulina Kałuża, Granice.pl/Borders.pl
"It's hard to break away from this work that so vividly intertwines great history with human fates. This novel touches the heart. I am entraced!"~ Barbara Wysoczanska, Polish best-selling author
"This novel is worth filming. The period of World War I and the recovery of Poland’s independence after 123 years of being wiped off the map of Europe, as well as the description of the life of the nobility under Russian rule, is very rarely depicted in our literature, which makes this novel even more desirable. I impatiently await Volume II."~ Wojciech Werner-Wojnarowicz