Marek Hlasko: Marek Hlasko, known as the Polish James Dean, was born 1933. He was known for his brutal prose style and unflinching eye. Persecuted by the Polish government, Hlasko spent the last decade of his life in exile, and died in 1969 of an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol in Wiesbaden, West Germany.

Tomasz Mirkowicz: Tomasz Mirkowicz, translator of American and British fiction, was born in Warsaw in 1953. He translated into Polish the works of Ken Kesey, George Orwell, Jerzy Kosinski, Harry Matthews, Robert Coover, Alan Sillitoe and Charles Bukowski. Mirkowicz, also a fiction writer and critic, died in 2003.