The Notorious Roman Trilogy (1962-2009) became notorious by... accident. Its author, Jacek Bocheński, wanted merely to reread the Latin classics of the period of the fall of the Roman Republic for his own and his readers' pleasure. The project was an exercise in escapism. Fed up with Polish communism, Bocheński hoped to forget about politics and just have fun.

But his re-reading of the classics caused an uproar: the tyrannical governments of Eastern Europe saw his portrayal of the political mechanisms of ancient Rome as an attack on them; Bocheński became public enemy number one. The end? The author went on to become one of the leaders in the Polish civil independence movement, and Eastern European communist regimes fell.

Politics made his books a political plaything, published only in small editions, or banned, or, on the contrary, extolled as full of political and psychological insights; but the work deserves its place in the sun on its own literary merits. In the end, anyone can discuss politics but only a few can write immortal literature.