The road that led me to literature was very different from the one followed by my fellow writers in Poland.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In the same period, Polish literature also underwent some significant changes. From social-political literature, which had a great tradition and strong motivation to be that way, Polish literature changed its focus to a psychological rather than a social one.
I had started writing as a poet in a closed, post-Revival, claustrophobic world, where the shadows of the national upheaval and the intense effort - the intense self-conscious effort - to make a literary movement were still evident. Now we lived a life as writers that was more cosmopolitan, more open, that had more travel and exchange.
In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.
I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.
I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.
I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.
I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.
My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.