The Possessed

From "a master of verbal burlesque [and] a connoisseur of psychological blackmail" (John Updike), Witold Gombrowicz's harrowing and hilarious pastiche of the Gothic novel, now in a new, authoritative English translation

Witold Gombrowicz is considered by many to be Poland's greatest modernist, and in The Possessed, he demonstrates his playful brilliance and astonishing range by using the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a darkly funny and lively subversion of the form. With dreams of escaping his small-town existence and the limitations of his class, a young tennis coach travels to the heart of the Polish countryside to train Maja Ocholowska, a beautiful and promising player whose bourgeois family has fallen upon difficult circumstances. Yet as Maja and the young man are alternately drawn to and repulsed by the other, they find themselves embroiled in the fantastic happenings taking place at the dilapidated castle nearby, where a mad prince haunts the halls, and bewitched towels, conniving secretaries, famous clairvoyants, and uncanny doubles conspire to determine the fate of the lovers. Serialized first in Poland in the days preceding the Nazi invasion, and now translated directly into English for the first time by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Possessed is a comic jewel, a hair-raising thriller, and a provocative early masterpiece from the acclaimed author of classics like Pornografia and Cosmos.

"The Possessed reads like a modern Gothic tale written by Dostoevsky, then touched-up and made even odder by the pen of George Saunders." — Leonid Bilmes, 3: AM Magazine

[A] seriously good comic novel...Exuberant, playful, insincere, sometimes haughty, Gombrowicz was one of Poland's greatest modernist writers.'" — Matthew Janney, Financial Times

"This 1939 treasure from Polish modernist Gombrowicz, available in its entirety for the first time in English...This works perfectly both as a straightforward gothic akin to Du Marier's Rebecca and as a knowing parody." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) is one of the twentieth century's most important modernists and enduring avant-garde writers. His first novel, Ferdydurke, was published in Poland in 1937, and he lived in exile in Argentina from the beginning of World War II to 1963. Among many literary works, he is the author of his three-volume Diaries, as well as the novels Trans-Atlantyk, Pornografia, and Cosmos, winner of the 1967 International Prize for Literature.