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Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed

The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism

21 October 2023

9:00 AM

21 October 2023

9:00 AM

The Possessed Witold Gombrowicz, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Fitzcarraldo Editions, pp.402, 12.99

On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. It’s hardly an event which needs its significance re-stating, but there was one outcome which has received rather less attention than the impending crisis in Europe. After the first instalments – serialised in newspapers in the summer of that year – a bizarre, flamboyant, mock-gothic novel by an unknown writer, ‘Z.

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