According to Le Rider, the concept of ‘Central Europe’ appears in times of crisis and upheaval in Europe, which can be proved during the EU accession in 2004 and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The doctoral project examines contemporary Polish literature published between these years, which participates in an aesthetic, discursive and predominantly postcolonial construction of Central Europe (Europa Środkowa) as a ‘mental map’. The project aims to demonstrate continuations and rewritings of geopoetic imaginaries of Central Europe in Polish literary works. It highlights references to cultural or historical spatial phantoms such as ‘Kresy’ or Galicia, as well as critical revisions of cultural memory. In particular, the Jewish heritage of Central Europe and the absence of Jewish life as a consequence of the Shoah are dominant layers in recent constructions of Central Europe. The theoretical framework of the project is formed by concepts and dynamics of mental mapping, postcolonial criticism and memory studies. It focuses on selected prose and poetry of Olga Tokarczuk, Tomasz Różycki and Ziemowit Szczerek.