This debut novel is a towering achievement. Though born in Germany, the author is of Polish descent and divides his time between Poland and England, where he studied at Cambridge. What a fascinating and thought-provoking read this is. I read this novel in advance of publication through NetGalley in return for an honest review. It’’s a wonderful debut - 4 1/2 stars more than 5 perhaps - there’s potential for a stunning second novel. This is Jedrowski’s first novel and arguably this shows in the somewhat florid similes, but i could feel the pent up desire in the narrator in their use, so on balance this is excusable (intentional?). This worked for me having read the novel recently, but it strikes me that something would be lost if you weren’t familiar with the novel (in which case go and read it!). James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a recurring theme, with comparisons to events there in the lives of the narrator and his lover.
I’m a sucker for a novel that explores the discovery of sexual identity (see Call Me By Your Name or Lie With Me), and for stories set on the cusp of a failed soviet era state (The Last Hundred Days) and Swimming in the Dark combines these themes with devastating effect.
Written effectively as a long form letter directly to an old lover back in Poland, you are immersed in the narrator’s journey, his secret desires, his frustrations and desire to escape. Swimming in the Dark is a beautifully written novel about trying to find love, and a place in society, as a closeted gay young man in Communist era Poland. Jedrowski is an authentic new international star' EDMUND WHITE 'A lyrical exploration of the conflict between gay love and political conformity. A beautiful, captivating love story that deepened my understanding of life in communist era Poland' JESSICA SHATTUCK, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle 'The surprise of Swimming in the Dark lies in its intimate ambivalence - that it captures the pleasures of everyday life behind the Iron Curtain as well as the privations.
Jedrowski is a remarkable writer, alive to the ramifications of history and politics, in which the violence of a corrupt state can never fully stamp out the flourishing of beauty, grace and resistance' JUSTIN TORRES, bestselling author of We the Animals I needed to see these boys, these lovers, through to the end. 'I began reading, and soon realized I wouldn’t be doing anything else that day. 'A young Polish author who writes rather miraculously in English, of which he has magisterial and frankly, Conradian command' GUARDIAN, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Marvellous, precise, poignant writing the reader is happy to be overwhelmed.
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