International recognition of Adam Zagajewski, one of the most talented Polish writers belonging to the "Generation of 1968," is chiefly owing to his achievements in verse. His poems-along with poems by his older Polish colleagues, Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rózewicz, and Wislawa Szymborska-are among the most frequently translated and most popular contemporary poetic works. They have been published in English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Russian, Dutch, and Hungarian.

Adam Zagajewski was born on 21 June 1945 in Lwów (then U.S.S.R., now Ukraine), the second child of Ludwika and Tadeusz Zagajewski. In October of the same year, his family moved to the Silesian city of Gliwice in Poland, where his father became a professor at the local technical university. In Gliwice, Zagajewski completed his elementary and high school education. After his graduation from high school in 1963, he moved to Krak...