This powerful novel, one of the greatest in European literature, tells the sweeping saga of War and Rebellion that changed the face of Eastern Europe in the 17th Century, and its heroic message rings just as forcefully today as it did when it was first published in Polish in 1884. It is a story of love and adventure, violent passions, monumental treasons and towering commitments, set against the bloody background of Bohdan Hmyelnitzki's Cossack Revolt in 1640. Hundreds of thousands perished in that national convulsion which also gave birth to the Ukrainian nation, while the great Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which held sway for a hundred years over the destinies of the eastern European peoples disappeared from the maps of Europe not long afterwards.
With Fire and Sword is a masterful blend of history and imagination that shows whole nations as well as individuals caught up in earthshaking events and fighting for their lives. It is the greatest national prose epic of Polish literature which not only depicts vital historical events but mirrors a people's soul.
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