Andrzej Stasiuk is one of the most successful and internationally acclaimed contemporary Polish writers, journalists and literary critics. He is best known for his travel literature and essays that describe the reality of Eastern Europe and its relationship with the West. After being dismissed from secondary school, Stasiuk dropped out also from a vocational school and drifted aimlessly, became active in the Polish pacifist movement and spent one and a half years in prison for deserting the army - as legend has it, in a tank. His experiences in prison provided him with the material for the stories in his literary debut in 1992. Entitled Mury Hebronu, it instantly established him as a premier literary talent. After a collection of "Love and non-love poems", Stasiuk's bestselling first full-length novel Bia?y kruk appeared in 1995 and consolidated his position among the most successful authors in post-communist Poland. Long before his literary breakthrough, in 1986, Stasiuk had left his native Warsaw and withdrew to the seclusion of the small hamlet of Czarne in the Beskids, a secluded part of the Carpathian mountain range in the south of Poland. 

September 25th, 1960 in Warsaw (Age 64)