Mateusz Buczko
Mateusz Buczko is the Polish-Australian author
of the historical fiction novel We Were Seeds.
About
Mateusz Buczko lives in Melbourne and has had a lifelong fascination with Polish history, particularly the Second World War and its aftermath.In 2015, he started an Instagram page dedicated to sharing Poland’s history with an English-speaking audience. The interest it generated inspired him to write a novel that would bring a chapter of that history to life.In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he began writing We Were Seeds, completing the manuscript five years later as war broke out and raged in eastern Europe once again.Outside of writing and history, Mateusz enjoys travelling, movies, content creation and spending time in nature.
We Were Seeds
1947. The Second World War is over… but in Poland, the fighting rages on. Branded as ‘bandits’ by the Soviet-backed authorities, soldiers loyal to the pre-war republic have taken to the forests, from where they continue their armed struggle for freedom.Twenty-one-year-old Jakub serves in a partisan cell led by his charismatic uncle Tomek and the battle-hardened Tadeusz. Camaraderie and common cause sustain the group, but as tragedies mount and a betrayal brings them to the brink of destruction, they are forced to question whether the seeds of a better future can be sown by force of arms alone.Inspired by the true story of Poland’s Cursed Soldiers, We Were Seeds is a novel about identity, love, and a forgotten generation who held onto their humanity in a time of crushing violence.