Marek Hlasko (Poland 1934 – Germany 1969) is one of the most important and colorful characters on the post-war Polish literary scene. His life, like his work, was an act of rebellion against the hypocrisy imposed by the system and by socialist realism. The son of a broken marriage, Marek experienced the horrors of war and occupation in his early years. These were followed by a time marked by famine, several changes of residence and an unorthodox education. From the age of sixteen he had concatenated a varied series of jobs as truck driver, construction worker, construction worker for the Warsaw metro or salesman. In 1951 he begins his career as a writer, which soon makes him a celebrity. Works such as The Eighth Day of the Week, The Next in Paradise or Killing the Second Dog and stories such as The Slipknot, A Charming Girl or The First Step in the Clouds, made Marek Hlasko the voice of a generation. He dies, in circumstances yet to be clarified, in the German city of Wiesbaden at the age of thirty-five; alcoholic, repudiated by the party in his own country, and after a journey in exile that took him from France to Germany, passing through Israel and the United States.