“Patient Genowefy, shameless Magdalene...” — meeting with Anna Brzezińska

Patient Genowefy, shameless Magdalene. Ordinary Women's Guide to the Middle Ages is an extraordinary story about the Middle Ages viewed from the perspective of those about whom the chronicles mostly kept silent — ordinary women.

Anna Brzezińska, writer and medievalist, takes readers on a fascinating journey through the world of medieval wives, mothers, widows, nuns, townspeople and peasant women. It shows their everyday life, work, relationships, concerns, desires and ways of coping in a world where a woman's life was subject to numerous precepts and restrictions.

The author goes back to historical sources, but tells about the past with extraordinary lightness, humor and literary sense. Instead of distant, anonymous characters, we get people of blood and blood — sometimes patient, sometimes shameless, brave, clever, and above all surprisingly close to the modern reader.

This is a book for those who want to look at the Middle Ages differently — not through the prism of kings and great battles, but through the history of everyday life. Brzezinska discovers before us the world of women who, although often remained in the shadow of history, were an integral part of it.