In his essay-manifesto of 1999, Zenon Fajfer defined liberature - a literary genre encompassing works whose authors intentionally design the shape of the book, so that it matches their textual message. Extending beyond the growing literary research on liberature, this book presents the theatrical contexts of the genre. Grounded in original archival research, it discusses the theatre practice of Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik (Zenkasi), as well as the post-war British avant-garde author, B. S. Johnson, whom they see as a liberatic author avant la lettre. Tracking the connections between their work in different media, the monograph considers how their theatrical experience may be related to the invention of unconventional aesthetic solutions in literature.

Of What Is Passing: Present-Tense Narration in the Contemporary Historical Novel explores a type of fiction that is illustrative of two current trends: on the one hand, the increasing popularity of the present tense as a narrative tense, and, on the other hand, the evolution of historical fiction at the turn of the twenty-first century.

This book is a pioneering study of contemporary historical novels in which events and the narration of them appear contemporaneous. It is argued that, far from being a mere substitute for the customary past tense, the present tense as a narrative tense entails a range of narrative devices that contribute to the effect of imaginatively reconstructing the past as if it were still the unfolding present.

The theoretical overview of time and tense in narrative is followed by detailed analyses of selected historical novels, illustrative of a variety of strategies consequent upon the choice of the present tense as the tense of narration. An underlying claim made throughout the book is that present-tense historical fiction typifies a new dimension of the genre which has recently attempted to navigate a way between traditional mimeticism and modern self-reflexivity.

The publication Places and Spaces of Crime in Popular Imagination ventures into the realms of genre literature and explores its rendering of locations and spaces. The uniqueness of this collection is in its varied theoretical framework and its broad focus. The explored genres include crime fiction, spy novel, academic mystery, crime comics, and crime film - a fact that ensures a detailed insight into the so far under-researched area of popular genres. Rather than a geographical approach (typically used in a number of published studies), this volume employs a broad analysis of various functions of individual spaces in relation to crime. Bringing together researchers from various institutions, the collection represents an up-to-date summary of central European research of place and space in popular genres.