The aim of the article is to analyze literary images of women who had an impact on the history of Poland in the historical novel Gambit hetmański (2014), written by Robert Foryś. This type of fiction is a popular variety of the genre, its main theme is the conflict between political factions fighting for power. The leaders of the factions are women. The article focus on the answer to the question: whether Foryś creating scandalous portraits of women who reach for power is a threat or a chance for them to recall and preserve their presence in history.

The paper examines the most important Italian historical novel and focuses on its principal migration routes, especially concerning main characters. It also examines a variety of representations of border and frontier (also in a metaphorical sense) in the novel.

This article discusses Olga Tokarczuk's idea of the historical novel formulated in her metacritical reflections. It focuses on the concept of conjecture which she herself finds crucial to her writing practice. Tokarczuk stresses the cognitive value of this method which allows her to bring in voices that have been drowned out with their stories and to recover the material, sensual experience of a bygone world. This reading of the Books of Jacob draws on her double-track definition of conjecture to analyze her writing strategy aimed at method this makes use of this double he with stories that have been left out in the past and to fill in the gaps and revise the distortions of the standard, 'written' historical narrative. The affirmation of the value of historical knowledge, tempered by the awareness of its limitations, situates Tokarczuk's fiction within the aesthetic of contemporary neo-historical novel.