Slawomir Mrozek has reigned as the preeminent playwright of Eastern Europe for the past half century. This new edition compiles his inventive work into one volume for the first time. In the early 1950s Mrozek was briefly a young enthusiast for the new communist regime, but, during the Cold War, he grew into one of the sharpest critics of totalitarianism. He left Poland for the West in 1964, preferring to write abroad, and when he denounced the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, his works were banned for a five-year period not only in his native Poland, but also in all Eastern bloc countries. Long recognized as a major literary figure, Mrozek began to visit Poland in the 1980s, and after the fall of Communism he eventually returned to Krakow where he now lives. This reissue of fourteen plays and ten short stories affirms Mrozek's mastery of a wide spectrum of styles and illustrates the development of his talent over the decades.