Nationality 1: Polish

Birthdate: 1945

Adam Zagajewski was born to Ludwika and Tadeusz Zagajewski on June 21, 1945, in Lwów, Ukraine, a city that was occupied by and integrated that year into the Soviet Union. The family was forced, along with many others in Lwów, to relocate to Gliwice, a Silesian city that had become part of Poland. Zagajewski's father became a professor at a technical university. In 1963, after Zagajewski graduated from high school, he moved to Kraków, where he studied philosophy and psychology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1968, he was offered a position as a teaching assistant in philosophy at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy.

In Eastern Europe, Zagajewski encountered much political turmoil, including the Polish student protests against restrictions on free speech in March 1968, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army in August 1968, the anti-Jewish purge of universities in Soviet-controlled...