Books in the CEU Press Classics (formerly Central European Classics) series

Tells the story of Cezary Baryka, a young Pole who finds himself in Baku, Azerbaijan, then a predominantly Armenian city, as the Russian Revolution breaks out. He becomes embroiled in the chaos caused by the revolution, and barely escapes with his life. Then, he and his father set off on a horrendous journey west to reach Poland.

Involvement in the Zionist movement takes Hannah from her Jewish village in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to a commune in a nearby town, where she falls in love with Ivo Karajich: a Jew, yet not a Jew. The ensuing drama plants into her eyes the hard grain of sorrow that her children will also inherit.

Features nine stories, and an essay, which were written during the World War One, or in the first years of Estonian independence in the early 1920s. They reflect the troubled spirit of the times, but exhibit the influence of a wide selection of writers, ranging from O Wilde and M Gorky, to F Nietzsche and Edgar Allan Poe.

Iwaszkiewicz's work is familiar to every Polish reader, yet remains unknown to the outside world. These stories were all written in the 1930s, and provide an extraordinary evocation of Poland's first brief era of independence between the wars. They are also timeless sonatas of love and loss.