Antoni Libera is a literary critic, translator and theatre director, noted especially for his collaborative work with Samuel Beckett. Madame is his first novel. He lives in Warsaw, Poland.Agnieszka Kolakowska born in Poland in 1960, brought up in England and educated at Yale and Cambridge. She has translated works from Polish and French into English, as well as working as a freelance editor and journalist. Books translated include:Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets by Teresa Toranska and Freedom, Fame, Lying and Betrayal by Leszek Kolakowski

Essentially a vision of a life-changing teenage crush, Libera's debut novel . . . captures the frustrations of grasping for anything of the world from behind the Iron Curtain and of battling or passion of any kind.