"The four beautiful stories in The Birch Grove and Other Stories by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz are written in the language of dreams that have come true: wistful and full of gentle melancholy. They are set in the rolling hills and forests of an idyllic but reorganizable rural Europe, sometime between the two World Wars … An explanation for Iwaszkiewicz's unexpected focus is offered in the introduction by the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (written for this addition to the excellent series of Central European Classics, whose aim is to show the West the genius of the other, Eastern Europe, hidden for half a century behind the Iron Curtain). Kolakowski gives just enough thoughtful context and background to guide English-speaking readers to an understanding of an author whose work is familiar to every Polish reader, yet remains unknown to the outside world … As the Western and Eastern halves of a continent that has been divided by ideology finally prepare to reunite in the European Union, fictions such as these, which bring back the breath and colour of humanity to the Western world's picture of Poland, deserve to be celebrated."