Paweł Reszka is one of the most recognisable Polish reporters of his generation. He is known above all for Płuczki (The Washers) — a harrowing book about people sifting the earth at former extermination camps in search of gold and valuables taken from murdered Jews. The Devil and a Bar of Chocolate appeared earlier, but reveals the same observational instinct and the same ability to enter places where other reporters do not reach or do not wish to go.

The subjects of these stories are an invisible Poland: people with a deep sense of defeat, locked in patterns of violence, shame, and silence. Reszka speaks with juvenile killers, with women beaten by their husbands, with perpetrators who do not understand their own guilt, with witnesses to family tragedies. He writes about sexual repression in a small town, about ashamed Righteous Among the Nations, about the “curing” of homosexuality, about anonymous organ donors.

Each text is a separate story, told from court files, interview transcripts, and conversations lasting many hours. Reszka does not judge — but he selects facts and quotations with such precision that the moral weight of the stories becomes unbearable. Between the main reportages appear brief inserts in which various people answer the question: what does happiness mean to you?

The title is deliberately paradoxical: the devil and a bar of chocolate represent two poles of the same world, where good and evil are not as far apart as we would like to believe. Reszka writes about the Poland that never makes the front pages — but exists on every street of every town.