This article is an attempt to identify the main themes in the literary work of Zygmunt Haupt, a Polish writer, journalist and painter, who emigrated to the United States in the aftermath of World War II. His writings show a keen awareness of the issue of absence/presence and the related problems of memory traits, identity and literary representation. Drawing on the psychoanalytical criticism of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, this reading of Haupt’s fi ction, especially his short stories (whose collected edition was published in 2007 under the title The Basque Devil), is a critical reassessment of his work. As a storyteller he excels in the depiction of scenes of terror, desire and the uncanny. The article argues Haupt’s work represents not only a remarkable literary achievement but also offers an interesting study case for critics whose approach is founded on literary theory, psychoanalysis and anthropology.

This is a critical reading of two Polish science-fiction novels of the post-Apocalypse subgenre, Cassandra’s Head by Marek Baraniecki and The Old Axolotl by Jacek Dukaj, with the help of concepts borrowed from the philosophical toolkit of Jacques Lacan. Each of the two books envisages an apocalyptic catastrophe and its consequences as well as the subsequent attempts to rebuild human civilization. The action in either novel is shaped by tensions between the Symbolic and the Real. The latter, though suppressed and shut out, keeps resurfacing, usually when it is least expected, leaving an indelible marks in the life of the survivors. An analysis of the handling of this conflict in the two novels offers a number of insights into the way these two fundamental modes (or, Lacanian orders) of human perception are integrated into the worlds of post-Apocalyptic fiction.