born 1960 in Warsaw, writer, journalist and literary critic. Stasiuk debuted in 1992 with Mury Hebronu (“The walls of Hebron”), the material for which stemmed from an 18-month prison sentence that the author received for deserting the army. He is the recipient of the Samuel-Bogumil-Linde-Preis (2002), the Nike Literary Award (2005) and the Adalbert-Stifter-Preis (2005). Stasiuk is a contributor to numerous journals and newspapers, including Czas Kultury and Tygodnik Powszechny.
In this excerpt from Andrzej Stasiuk’s latest book, one of Poland’s leading writers and critics explores what drove him to realize a lifelong dream, and strike out ever further eastwards, away from his childhood home. As Stasiuk remarks, he always was attracted to places “that lie at the end of the line, spaces from which you can only ever return”.
