Andrzej Głoskowski

A journalist from "Gazeta Wyborcza" recalls his investigative reports and the consequences he suffered while trying to reveal the truth.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Ewa decides to end her romance with Alek. From the mountain guesthouse they go by car to Warsaw. . . Kim, after being released early from prison, returns to his wife, Jola, who lives in a lonely house. Here he finds a man who claims he has been hired for hard work. Kim wants to find out if Mietek is not Jola's lover.

A famous surgeon is beaten by drunken bullies, loses his memory and cannot recollect who he was before. He gets to a village, lives in a not so well to do family and becomes the Quack - he slowly regains his talent for medicine and saves the lives of several village patients.

A story of a female production manager in a garment factory discovering that an award is being given to the wrong person on purpose. She stands up the injustice. Her best friend backs her up instead of the cultprit, the man she is living with. Later, the former production manager becomes a mayor in a resort town, where she in turn practices malfasance and is caught in the act by her friend.

The problem of the Polish population displacement from their land within the limits of the Prussian partition. Germans come to the village harassing a wealthy peasant Snail, leading to the tragedy. Slug's cottage burns, his wife dies. The peasant does not give up, defending his inheritance. He sticks on a patch of his Polish soil and protects it like a soldier his post.

The action takes place in the Polish countryside in the second half of the 19th century. The main character is a few months old Staś, son of the blacksmith Józef and Małgorzata, from whose perspective we see the conflict of his parents with the local organist.