Vivid, colourful and poetic new stories in which the author deals with Poland's past from World War II to the present day.

Count Kyrill, a Russian exile living in Paris and Graham Wilson III, an American magnate plan a big art exhibition in the idyllic Bad Kranach. Art collectors from all over the world are to take part, for example the Polish Jew Joel Weiss and the German Baron Kugler. The exhibition, which is to show some of Europe's finest art treasures, could be a proof that the fine arts are superior to petty nationalism. But while Count Kyrill and Graham Wilson III are engaged in revealing their interests – an insurance fraud on the highest level – in the course of a telephone call, a German security official with a dubious past is busy preparing for the exhibition. The Pole Jan, who has been tormented by nocturnal visions of the past since the death of his wife, also sets off for Kranach. Thus a meeting takes place between people with a common past which overtakes them in this play with fire.

The fact that Szczypiorski is not only a great narrator but also a brilliant essayist was already evident in his ›Notes on the State of Things‹. Now all his essays and speeches are united in one volume with which Szczypiorski became a household word in recent years, above all the speech on the anniversary of the reunification of Germany on October 3rd 1994 in Bremen.

A book which shows that the great works of world literature such as ›The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman‹ are not created in the ivory tower; important insights of a committed writer in times of upheaval in Eastern Europe.

A European contemporary classic full of poetry and subtle humour, and at the same time a sociopolitical work. More than half a million Diogenes copies have been sold so far.

The winner of the ›Wiadnomości Literackie‹ Award 1988, now complemented with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The year is 1943. In German-occupied Warsaw, what was once the largest Jewish community in Europe has been almost entirely deported. A few individuals manage to flee the ghetto, including the beautiful Irma Seidenman, because she possesses three advantages: a forged passport, blonde hair and blue eyes. When she is recognised one day by a Nazi informant, the drama really begins. Will Irma Seidenman be saved?

Kamil, a Warsaw sociologist, is summoned to Geneva to participate in an oral history project about the collapse of Eastern Europe communism and resolves to tell his own story through a gallery of portraits of the many women he has loved. These reminiscences emerge against the broader canvas of circumstances and events that have shaped the past sixty years of Poland's turbulent, tragic history. Soon he finds himself inexorably drawn to his interrogator from the ›free‹ world, the chronicler of his life, the keeper of his secrets, an his heart's last hope for redemptive love. ›Self-portrait with Woman‹ is at once a haunting and lyrical portrait of a man, of a country, and of the twilight years of an era.

A love story and political thriller with autobiographical elements all in one. The central character, scientist Antoni, tells a journalist the story of his life, his great love for Justyna, a member of the resistance who has followed him through many years of imprisonment all across the country. On a second and third level the same events are told from the viewpoint of the Communist Czarnocki and of the Russian functionary Lomakin. In this exciting novel Szczypiorski has created a clear picture of the events and background forming of European history of this century to the present day.