A well-regarded engineer in a big enterprise is hounded by trumped up attacks on his integrity when he delves too deeply into how bonuses are handled by the management. He gets into an argument with the guard, is arrested and subsequently fired. An old friend, a journalist, tries to sort things out but the victim's stubbornness and past problems with his wife lead to lossess by both.
Stefan Starzyński, the mayor of Warsaw, organizes life in the capital in September 1939 and lift the inhabitants' spirits via radio announcements. After the surrender, he does not use his last chance to escape.
The story begins in March of 1968, the days of students protests. A hot- headed student protests the Dean's decision to expell a fellow student on fake accusation charges, upon which he drops out of university rather than make a compromise. He loses everything in the process: his girlfriend, housing privileges - he becomes a coal deliverer. On the job he witnesses an accident that causes death of a fellow worker. He decides to write a story, which is good and a publishing house wants to print it, but only after some corrections are made. He refuses again and the story is not printed. Finally, a story is commercialized and made into a succesful film and brings fame to the original author.
Upon finding a book that relates his grandfather's story, an officer ventures through Spain meeting a wide array of characters, most of whom have a story of their own to tell.
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator.
A tale of a young impoverished nobleman, who with his uncle returns from a war against the order of the Teutonic Knights in Lithuania. He falls in love with a beautiful woman and pledges an oath to bring her "three trophies" from the Teutonic Knights.
