A unique mix of prose and poetry, of the joy of life and the agony of loss, in Mother Departs Różewicz creates a rich and complex portrait of his mother Stefania and of her indelible influence on her extraordinary family. Weaving together fragments from diaries, stories and notebooks – including moving texts written by his two brothers and Stefania herself – Różewicz creates a portrait of their lives and relationships which is sometimes brutal, often hilarious, and always tender. Here is an artist attempting to give form, even meaning, to life – and death. ‘One of the great European poets of the twentieth century’ Seamus Heaney