I give up - I can't do it. This book is dreadful. I love historical fiction, and all I wanted was some good fictional characters to hook me into a very general overview of Polish history. I have Polish heritage and I visited the country 3 years ago, so I have a strong interest in the subject matter. This book failed to deliver in so many ways.These characters are barely even 2-dimensional; they speak nothing but stilted expositionese; they are not memorable or distinguishable from one another by anything even vaguely resembling personality; since I put it down a couple of weeks ago I struggle to name even one.The style, such as it is, is confusing. Sometimes it behaves like a history book, sometimes it lectures you about politics or political philosophy, sometimes the 'characters' lecture each other, and at others it weirdly drops into theatre dialogue. It is clunky and so very hard to read. The only thing I appreciated was the page or so of notes at the beginning that indicated which characters or events were fictional.