Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction by Michael Parker
‘Darkness ... split by distant flashes, illuminations'
The Earthly Paradise
Good and Bad Blood
A Grenade under
the Bed
The Apartment with Fig-Plants
Tomcat
Doctor Catchfly
Manichean Poisons
Early Literary Tastes (and Russian Roulette)
Inside the Lodge
The Rushing Heraclitean River
‘I devote too little
time to study’
Egg-Man
The Cezary Baryka Complex
Friday Seminars, Literary Wednesdays
Leviathan’s Wardens
A Bridge Suspended in Mid-Air
The Devil’s See-Saw
‘If early love had lasted...'
‘To the left, to the right'
Photographs 1
‘A certain student in the city of Paris'
‘The whole
cosmos revolves within us'
‘On black meadows'
Publican
‘A handful of unearthly truths'
‘Siena descends into gleams'
‘In my homeland, to which I will
not return'
Warsaw Friendships
Janka
Coming Down to Earth
A Blood-Red
Star
Medals in the Suitcase
Reflections on the Inferno
The Theory of the Last Złoty
Miranda’s Island
Gniewosz
‘A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto'
Noah’s Ark
Photographs 2
‘We are from Lublin'
Robinson Crusoe from Warsaw
A Pact with the Devil
Mother’s
Grave
Rescue
Chochoły
‘A passion for doing
something useful’
Open-Source
Intelligence
‘We are slaves here!’
Dry Flame
Slaughterhouse
‘And you are a deserter'
Rock Bottom
‘The enemy
of order—humankind’
Exorcisms
Daughter
of Prophets
'Beyond tears'
‘Enough of this lethargy and fighting'
‘To be able to earn a living through
writing'
Les grands
seigneurs
‘To you, sweetheart, I cannot say hello'
Eternal Moment
A Place on Earth
Grizzly Peak
Settling Accounts on Two Fronts
Wilderness
Letters to Oneself
An American in Paris
Second Space
Prisoners of Ulro
‘Perhaps only my reverence will save me'
‘One of the greatest poets of our time, if not the greatest'
Job
Remembering the Wounds
‘This crown keeps slipping over my ears'
Heloise
‘I will haunt you with my strange love'
The Dragon
Provinces
‘One bright point'
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Illustration Credits
Index