Per Wästberg, who had recently stepped down from the presidency of International PEN, reflects on his years with the organization and comments on its current state. He tells the story of how the Polish government removed the leadership of the Polish branch of PEN and replaced them with leaders of its own choosing (which led International PEN to withdraw their recognition of Polish PEN) and the trip he made to Poland to try and mend relations-- a trip during which, among other strange occurrences, the Minister of Culture told Wästberg that he (the Minister) no longer read anything officially published, he only read samizdat. Wästberg also recounts a surreal early morning meeting with General Jaruzelski, the head of Poland at the time, and fractious and inconclusive meetings with the Polish writers expelled from PEN. In addition, Wästberg discusses the activities of PEN branches in Denmark, India, Romania (where Ceausescu refused to free a writer on behalf of whom PEN was advocating, saying that he was "not a writer, but a homosexual thief"), and the United States of America.
