Aleksander Wat’s writing was remarkably ambitious. He sought to undermine the order of literature and politics throughout Europe. A former Dadaist, he held Polish literature in contempt.

‘Kings in Exile’ imagines an impossible history well worth thinking about. A Congress of dethroned European Kings sets up a republic on a vacant volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, which is then cut off for centuries. History goes into reverse. The Isle of Kings quickly reverts to absolutism, declines into war and poverty, and becomes feudal. In the year 2431 a black professor leads a scientific expedition to the rediscovered island. From an airship the predominantly black team observes a battle between two white and hairy barbarian chiefs.

I favour writing that probes the unpredictable turbulence of history, and the curious ideas which it generates, over writing – valuable as it is – about the occasional, or comings of age, the lyrical or fleeting. Looking back on the collection in which this story appears, Wat said it was a warning against totalitarianism and “a confrontation of all humanity’s basic ideas – morality, religion, even love.” He went on to be a leading communist intellectual before being imprisoned in the Soviet Union and breaking with Stalinism. Or vice versa.

This collection first appeared when I was working for Charter 88, the constitutional reform campaign, just before we held a major conference on the future of the monarchy. Outside the academy the moments are rare when reading for pleasure, for a speaking engagement, and for the day job converge.

First published in Polish in Bezrobotny Lucyfer, Hoesick Warsaw, 1927, and in English in Lucifer Unemployed, Northwestern University Press, 1990