The Possessed
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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 Ochołowska, 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 1939 treasure from Polish modernist Gombrowicz (1904–1969; Pornografia), available in its entirety for the first time in English, involves a young tennis coach entangled in intrigue and supernatural phenomena. Leszczuk is visiting an estate in the Polish countryside to tutor tennis prodigy Maja Ochołowska, who's engaged to middle-class schemer Cholawicki. Knowing that his fiancée finds him repulsive and is only out for money, Cholawicki pins his hopes to clinch the marriage on inheriting or outright stealing a treasure trove of art from his employer, Prince Holszański. The nobleman, meanwhile, is haunted by the ghost of his dead son, Franio, whose apparition stalks Holszański Castle. Gombrowicz fills the plot with genre tropes, including a self-important professor who convinces himself that he would steal the prince's art for the sake of "the common good," a cowed servant who, terrorized by Franio's ghost, lets leak to Cholawicki that all is not normal in the castle, and more. 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 Marier's Rebecca and as a knowing parody.
