Kornel Filipowicz (1913-1990) was a Polish novelist, poet and screenwriter. He studied biology in Krakow and lived in that city for most of his life. His first book of poetry, in an edition of ten copies, came out in 1943, and established him as a leading figure in the Polish avant-garde. During the war he was arrested and imprisoned in the Gross-Rosen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. In later years he became a close friend of the poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska, with whom he exchanged thousands of letters. The first of these he sent in April 1966, enclosing photographs of monkeys from Krakow Zoo.