This present volume—published as the sixth one in the critical edition of Stanisław Przybyszewski’s (1868–1927) Dzieła literackie (Literary works)—includes the novel Dzieci nędzy (1913; Children of poverty) and its second part titled Adam Drzazga (1914). These works are being published together for the first time in accordance with the author’s intention, who emphasised that they should be read as two acts of the same drama. They are a study of madness and degeneration, being spread through inheritance and at the symbolic level they together create a synthesis of human fate: from the moment of the creation of the humankind destined to exist in Eden to its destruction foretold in the Book of Revelation. In the first part of dilogy the themes of paradise and delusional scenarios of its retrieval play the main role. In the second part the nihilistic themes are dominating—designed and realised scenarios of extermination and destruction of life.