The First Step in the Clouds. Selected Stories

Marek Hłasko—a rebel, a legend, an author banned in Poland for decades—is appearing in Belarusian translations for the first time.

The collection introduces selected short stories by the author, both debut and slightly later ones: harsh, touching, full of anxiety, and tender at the same time. Hłasko became the voice of the 1950s generation—young people disillusioned by the post-war world and the suffocating reality of the Polish People's Republic. Hłasko's characters love, work, fight for meaning in ruthless circumstances, lose hope, drink, and dream. And they don't expect pity. This is literature written with fire and on edge, translated into dozens of languages around the world and adapted by great directors. Marek Hłasko's prose still reads like a challenge.