The paper is a review of the book “Rozrachunki z wojną” by Sławomir Buryła (Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN 2017), which is devoted to the problems of literary representation of war in specific sociocultural contexts. Buryła reflects on Polish literature and pays special attention to the question: what does literature know about war and why? In addition, he diagnoses zones of silence and neglect as serious deficits within Polish war studies, particularly in the field of literary studies. The review contains a reconstruction and analysis of the argumentation provided in “Rozrachunki z wojną” as a contribution to such difficult and embarrassing topics as war, violence, genocide and “time of contempt”.