Originally published in Poland in 1948, and acclaimed as one of the finest postwar Polish novels, Ashes and Diamonds takes place in the spring of 1945, as the nation is in the throes of its transformation to People' Poland. Communists, socialists, and nationalists; thieves and black marketeers; servants and fading aristocrats; veteran terrorists and bands of murderous children bewitched by the lure of crime and adventure—all of these converge on a provincial town's chief hotel, a microcosm of an uprooted world.

JERZY ANDRZEJEWSKI (1909–1983) published his first book, Unavoidable Roads, a collection of short stories, in 1936. Two years later he won several prizes, including one from the Polish Academy of Literature, for his first novel, Mode of the Heart. Ashes and Diamonds, originally published in 1948, was made into a highly esteemed film and was awarded the International Critics' Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival.