Czapski was a towering public figure, but painting gave meaning to his life. Eric Karpeles, also a painter, reveals Czapski’s full complexity, pulling together all the threads of this remarkable life.

"Józef Czapski (1896-1993) was an artist, author, critic, and one of the founders of the influential Polish emigré monthly Kultura (published in Paris until 2000).

But who was the real Czapski? This cahier is a bold attempt by Keith Botsford to answer this question. Violating convention, he attempts to write Czapski's autobiography, or a biography from within .

Given that he lived into his ninety-seventh year, it’s no surprise that the artist has works dating from every decade of the twentieth century but the first.

Memories of Starobielsk portrays these doomed men, some with the detail of a finished portrait, others in vivid sketches that mingle intimacy with respect, as Czapski describes their struggle to remain human under hopeless circumstances.

A work of clear observation and deep compassion, Inhuman Land is one of the twentieth century’s indispensable acts of literary witness.