Today Andrzej Zaniewski (born in 1940) is one of the most fashionable prose writers in Western Europe. He is put on a par with F. Kafka, J. Joyce, A. Camus. The creative fate of the writer was unusual: the first Polish edition of the story “The Rat” appeared only after the publication of its translation into Czech (1990) and translations into nine others languages published by publishing houses in Denmark, Finland, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, USA, Great Britain, Italy. And A. Zanevsky wrote his “Rat” back in 1979! Finally, the Russian reader has a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the wonderful prose of the Polish writer. The first and so far only edition in Russian included three stories (“The Rat,” “The Shadow of the Pied Piper,” “The Civilization of Birds”), which Andrzej Zaniewski himself combined into the “Nameless Trilogy.”