The Possessed

(Paperback)

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InThe Possessed, Witold Gombrowicz, considered bymany to be Poland's greatest modernist, draws togetherthe familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce adarkly funny and playful subversion of the form. Withdreams of escaping his small-town existence and thelimitations of his status, a young tennis coach travelsto the heart of the Polish countryside where he is totrain Maja Ocholowska, a beautiful and promisingplayer whose bourgeois family has fallen upon difficultcircumstances. But no sooner has he arrived than therelationship with his pupil develops into one of twistedlove and hate, and he becomes embroiled in the fantastichappenings taking place at the dilapidated castlenearby. Haunted kitchens, bewitched towels, connivingsecretaries and famous clairvoyants all conspire todetermine the fate of the young lovers and the mad princeresiding in the castle. Translated directly into Englishfor the first time by Antonia Lloyd-Jones,The Possessedis a comic masterpiece that, despite being a literarypastiche, has all the hallmarks of Gombrowicz's typicallyprovocative style.

Reviews

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'One of the great novelists of our century.'

- Milan Kundera

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'A master of verbal burlesque, a connoisseur of psychological blackmail, Gombrowicz is one of the profoundest of late moderns, with one of the lightest touches.'

- John Updike

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'Gombrowicz is one of the super-arguers of the twentieth century.... The relentless intelligence and energy of his observations on cultural and artistic matters, the pertinence of his challenge to Polish pieties, his bravura contentiousness, ended by making him the most influential prose writer of the past half century in his native country.'

- Susan Sontag

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'There are also novels of another genre, false novels like Gombrowicz's, that are kinds of infernal machines.'

- Jean-Paul Sartre

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'What we have here is an unusual manifestation of a writing talent.'

- Bruno Schulz

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Author Bio

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-69) is one of the twentieth century's most enduring avant-garde writers. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and his remarkable Diary; and - after returning to Europe from Argentina in 1963 - was awarded the 1967 Prix Formentor/International for Cosmos.