“A good book inspires you throughout your entire life” – Elżbieta Bieńkowska, Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs

A good book is the one that you can always return to in search of new meanings and dimensions. It is also a book that accompanies you since the early years of your life. For me such book is ‘Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath.
I first read it when I was 17 years old and I still remember how influenced, moved and mesmerised I was with the story of Esther Greenwood. It is with this novel described by many critics as autobiographical, that the author established her fate as a real poet of vivid and yet realistic descriptions of human emotions, fears and passions.
Today after many years since I first read it I often come back to this book and I find different and new layers of meaning. The semantic jigsaw is what I find the most intriguing and inspiring in Plath’s works and ‘Bell Jar’, the only novel that she has written remains to me not only a great masterpiece of contemporary literature but also one of my favourite books of all times.

Elżbieta Bieńkowska, Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs