The Thickets is the first volume of Polish poet and novelist Józef Łobodowski’s Ukrainian Trilogy, written between 1955 and 1960. Set primarily in Russia’s Kuban region, the novel unfolds against a rich backdrop where Ukrainians, Russians, and Cossacks live alongside Tatars, Circassians, and waves of other peoples under Tsarist rule—among them Armenians and Poles. From this world emerges Staś (Stanisław), a young Pole and the central figure of the trilogy.
In The Thickets, Łobodowski paints a stark, unforgettable portrait of the turmoil that engulfed the former Russian Empire after the fall of the Tsar and Kerensky’s government. For Staś, once a student at a classical gymnasium, survival now means peddling contraband on the black market. Through his eyes, the reader is plunged into the chaos of war, revolution, and occupation—rendered with visceral power and human urgency.