This volume, entitled The Effect of Palimpsest: Culture, Literature, History, undertakes the pioneering task of employing the notion of palimpsest in the multi-layered and changing cultural landscape specific to East Central Europe. The multifarious readings presented in the collection, which evolved from a 2009 conference at the University of Chicago, contribute to a critical reframing of the origins, history and theory of the concept of the palimpsest. Beyond being viewed as an epistemological metaphor, the palimpsest reveals its potential to generate and engage a complex network of complementary meanings. The essays included in this collection probe the palimpsest across the ages, as well as in a variety of genres, media, and cultural spheres in order to revise and redefine our present understanding of the concept and its instantiations.