Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives message of the book is the importance of exploring new ideas beyond the ones that have been traditionally passed down. The title word "Sum" refers to the Latin for "I am," as in "Cogito ergo sum". Like Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", "Sum" does not fit entirely into the traditional category of a novel. "Sum" has been called "philosofiction", an "experimental novel", and "a collection of thought experiments". Most of the stories are understood to "posit the afterlife as mirroring life on Earth" The New York Times Book Review called Sum a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection [which] belongs to that category
Mr. Cogito Seeks Advice"), "Gra Pana Cogito" ("Mr. Cogito's Game"), "Co myśli Pan Cogito o piekle" ("What Mr. Cogito Thinks About Hell"), "Pan Cogito o postawie wyprostowanej" ("Mr Cogito On The Upright Position"), "Przesłanie Pana Cogito" ("The Message of Mr Cogito"). This poetry collection was published in Paris in 1983. An allusion to the state of martial law imposed in Poland by the Communist junta, it was officially unpublishable in Poland. A few months later an underground edition was published by a clandestine press in Poland, and no legal edition was available until 1992. It includes another twelve poems featuring Mr. Cogito,