The Possessed

Praise for The Possessed

"The Possessed is neither serious gothic, nor serious gothic parody, but something else that partakes of each . . . The reader too feels this unease, this dread, this anxiety, while also noting the silly, underwhelming effect of a towel being the harbinger of evil, a duality that well exemplifies Gombrowicz's simultaneous earnestness and sarcasm . . . Behind the gothic tropes and literal possession, though, one still detects Gombrowicz's sly humor and preoccupation with youthful obsessions leading to violence, motifs that receive more philosophically dense treatment in the later works Pornografia and Cosmos."–Eric Vanderwall, Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation

"Eighty-five
years after the Nazi invasion of Poland interrupted its original serial
publication, Gombrowicz's second novel receives its first complete
Polish-to-English direct translation . . . Crumbling antiquity, petty scheming,
romantic comedy of manners–these are the foundations of an unpredictable gothic
pastiche, both brazenly funny and deeply spooky. The short paragraphs fly by,
buzzing with intrigue and danger . . . Lloyd-Jones' translation crackles with
choice phrases, deftly capturing Gombrowicz's gorgeous scenic descriptions,
mordant sense of humor, and evocations of lurking horror. A delightful
revelation of an interbellum novel from one of the great Polish modernists."–Kirkus
Reviews (starred review)

"This 1939
treasure from Polish modernist Gombrowicz, available in its entirety for the
first time in English, involves a young tennis coach entangled in intrigue and
supernatural phenomena . . Gombrowicz fills the plot with genre tropes . . .
What emerges is a crafty and sharp exploration of the greed, lust, and vanity
that spin people out of control. Gombrowicz's gleeful misanthropy and sense of
the absurd shine through the genre trappings to create a potboiler that's
enjoyable on multiple levels. This works perfectly both as a straightforward
gothic akin to Du Maurier's Rebecca and as a knowing
parody."–Publishers Weekly (starred
review)

"Gothic themes and melodramatic flourishes dramatize
a modernist novel preoccupied with the fluidity of identity . . . In allowing
the utter weirdness of the great Polish modernist to shine through, this new
English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, best known for her translations of
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, may invite reassessment of its place in his
oeuvre."–Booklist

"The
Possessed lampoons stale literary conventions . . . An eye-rolling
pastiche of three genres: gothic chiller, Romeo-and-Juliet romance, and
detective yarn. You could call it a shaggy towel story . . . Usefully serves as
an introduction to the writer's comically spiky sensibility."–Bill
Marx, Arts Fuse

"[A] seriously good comic
novel . . . Exuberant, playful, insincere, sometimes haughty, Gombrowicz was
one of Poland's greatest modernist writers . . . Brimming with unruly,
high-octane prose, the book has the hallmarks of a classic gothic story: a
haunted castle, a mad prince and his conniving secretary–and, of course,
treasure. At first glance, this surface is rather depthless, but look closer
and you'll see the philosophically minded Gombrowicz getting on with what he
described as the central aim of his writing: 'to forge a path through the
Unreal to Reality.'"–Matthew Janney, Financial
Times

"The Possessed reads like
a modern Gothic tale written by Dostoevsky, then touched-up and made even odder
by the pen of George Saunders. It is certainly one of Gombrowicz's weirdest
literary creations–and that's saying something . . . What makes the Gothic part
of the story more than pastiche, though, is that Gombrowicz injects such
staples with his uniquely grotesque imagination. Only Gombrowicz could turn a
dirty yellow towel, hanging on a peg in the old castle kitchen, into a terrifying
object."–Leonid Bilmes, 3: AM Magazine

Praise
for Witold

Gombrowicz:

"One of the great novelists of our

century."–Milan
Kundera

"A master of verbal burlesque, a

connoisseur of psychological blackmail, Gombrowicz is one of
the profoundest

late moderns, with one of the lightest touches."
–John Updike

"[A] great Polish writer . . .

Extravagant, brilliant, disturbing, brave, funny . . . A
masterpiece."–Susan

Sontag, on Ferdydurke

"In him, for the first time, Polish literature
produced a writer to whom

the agonies of being Polish were less important than the
tragicomedy of being

human."–Times Literary
Supplement

"Probably the most important

20th-century novelist most Western readers have never heard
of."–Benjamin

Paloff, Words Without Borders

"Cosmos is a vicious and

uncompromised little gem of the obscene." –Adam
Novy, The Believer

"Borchardt's graceful, powerful,

and inventive translation is a great gift to all lovers of
Witold Gombrowicz's

quirky prose."–Jaroslaw Anders, on
Cosmos

"[Cosmos] will hold special

appeal for fans of Camus's The Stranger.
In this deft new translation,

Cosmosreveals itself as a challenging but
important work."–Frank Sennett, Booklist

(starred review)

"Cosmos is a compulsively

unsettling philosophical drama veiled as a quotidian mystery
. . . Borchardt's

new English translation conveys a world wrought with an
interconnectedness, or

perceived interconnectedness, that struggles to understand
meaningfully a

series of events that defy logical
association."–David Thomas Holmberg, Rocky

Mountain Review of Language and Literature

"[A] sly, funny, absorbing fourth

novel and lovingly translated by Danuta
Borchardt."–Neil Gordon, New York

Times Book Review, on
Cosmos

"Pornografia is animated by

an unconcealed pain, and that is what lifts it above the
ordinary run of

modernist invention and makes it poignant and relevant today
. . . It is a book

about the universal longing for the time we have lost by
growing old. Does it

matter that it is a reformulation of something that already
preoccupies us?

What we ask of art is that it should present a familiar
thing in a new and

striking way, and that is what Pornografia does."
–Aaron Thier, The

New Republic

"A grotesque evocation of obsession

. . . Gombrowicz is a relentless psychoanalyzer and a
consummate stylist; his

prose is precise and forceful . . . Borchardt's translation
(the first into

English from the original Polish) is a model of consistency,
maintaining a

manic tone as it navigates between lengthy, comma-spliced
sentences and sharp,

declarative thrusts." –Publishers
Weekly (starred review), on Pornografia

"Borchardt . . . spins out a web of

words that vibrate with unholy energy."
–Kirkus Reviews, on
Pornografia

"Gombrowicz's fiction is

hyperactive, grotesque, philosophical, juvenile, lyrical,
serious, ironic,

existential, and confrontational–in other words, it
harnesses just about every

technique that a fiction writer could hope to master . . .
English language readers

who have been lucky enough to pick up and enjoy Gombrowicz
in the last ten

years probably have Danuta Borchardt to thank."
–Luke Sykora, Rain Taxi,

on
Pornografia

"Danuta Borchardt
brings

Gombrowicz's great novel to us with a force and beauty
English-language readers

have not felt before. Deception and illusion, savagery and
high mindedness,

fire and ice, desire and impotence: such are the antinomies
that anchor this

wildly believable and yet improbable fiction, and all are
captured exactly in

the crystalline sentences of a translator who is herself a
masterful stylist."

–Robert Boyers, editor of Salmagundi and Director
of the New York State Summer

Writers Institute, on
Pornografia

"The creepy genius of Witold

Gombrowicz's Pornografia is the acute,
believable, and unavoidable

awareness that there is another universe right inside the
'real' one that is

fighting with it. What's more, the 'real' world becomes
increasingly less

believable as the invisible one takes possession of it. This
is High Gothic and

brilliant psychological drama, while it is also, true to its
title, profoundly

(but not vulgarly) pornographic. One of the 20th century's
truly great writers,

Gombrowicz is lucky to have found a first-class translator
in Danuta Borchardt,

who understands and communicates an eeriness rare in
English." –Andrei

Codrescu, author of The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara
and Lenin Play Chess

"Gombrowicz is the antithesis of

Borges and the godfather of Bolaño. Who would have thought
that a Polish émigré

could become such a superb Argentine writer?" –Ilan
Stavans, Professor of Latin

American and Latino Culture, Amherst College

"[A] satisfying literary and

emotional experience."–H.B. Segal,
Saturday Review, on Pornografia

"Danuta Borchardt . . . is faithful

to the substance of the original and gives the reader a
good, zesty flavor of

Gombrowicz's inspired idiosyncrasy . . . A genuinely
astonishing

masterwork."–Eva Hoffman, New York Times
Book Review, on Ferdydurke

"Exuberant humor
. . . Suggesting

the absurdist drama of Eugene Ionesco, if not the short
fiction of Franz

Kafka."–Library Journal, on
Ferdydurke

"A wonderfully subversive,

self-absorbed, hilarious book. Think Kafka translated by
Groucho Marx, with

commentaries."–Kirkus Reviews,
on Ferdydurke

"Gombrowicz's language . . .

subverts language and ideas to a cosmic meltdown, as if in a
fun-house mirror.

Gombrowicz manages to befuddle, amuse, insult and astonish
with this tale of

exile, uprootedness and identity."–Susan Miron,
Boston Globe, on Trans-Atlantyk