In the final week of the Guardian's tour of Europe we send novelist James Hopkin to Poland in pursuit of its literary soul. He meets publishers and bookshop entrepreneurs in Krakow, who are taking a great literary tradition into the 21st century. We also take advice from world literature tourists on the must-read books from Poland, and discover several of the world's great poets among their recommendations.
Meanwhile, with a Russian invasion of the UK imminent – or at least an invasion of authors, as Russia is crowned guest of honour at next week's London Book Fair – we visit Moscow to meet a new generation of writers who are taking up the mantle of Bulgakov, Gorky and Chekhov. We ask them what Gogol has to do with Yuri Gagarin, and why the fantasy writers of today owe so much to an eccentric 19th-century librarian.
Reading list
New and Collected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska (Roundhouse)
New and Collected Poems by Czesław Miłosz (Penguin Classics)
Barbarian in the Garden by Zbigniew Herbert (Atlantic)
Winter Under Water by James Hopkin (Picador)
The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem (Harcourt)
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin (Phoenix)
Dark Avenues and The Village by Ivan Bunin (Oneworld)
Metro 2033 by Dmitri G (Gollancz)
2017 by Olga Slavnikova (Duckworth)
• This audio was amended on 11 April 2011 to correct the greeting in Russian which said 'goodbye' instead of 'hello'
