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One of the indisputable totems of twentieth-century world literature, Witold Gombrowicz wrote Pornografia after leaving his native Poland for Argentina in 1939 and then watching from afar as the German invasion destroyed his country. Translated for the first time into English from the original Polish by award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt, Pornografia is one of Gombrowicz’s highest regarded works—a richly imagined tale of violence and carnality set in wartime Poland. In the midst of the German occupation, two aging intellectuals travel to a farm in the countryside, looking for a respite from the hellish scene in Warsaw. They quickly grow bored of their bucolic surroundings—that is, until they are hypnotized by a pair of country youths who have grown up alongside each other at the farm. The older men are determined to orchestrate a tryst between the two teenagers, but they are soon distracted by a string of violent developments, including an order from the underground movement for the men to assassinate a rogue resistance captain who has sought refuge with them. The erotic games are put on hold—until the two dissolute intellectuals find a way to involve their pawns in the murderous plot. ...
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In this inspired book, the eminent Polish author Witold Gombrowicz reflects on seven great philosophers. He discusses Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Heidegger in six “one-hour” essays, then allows Marx a short “fifteen-minute” piece.
“Brilliantly, savagely funny. . . . Gombrowicz is that rare writer in whom the weight of a powerful intellect is leavened by both linguistic daring and an infectious sense of whimsy.”—Benjamin Paloff, The Nation
“[This book] is like the course in philosophy you wish you had taken.”—David Lehman, Bloomberg News
"Vintage Gombrowicz: concise, sober, lucid, and radically agnostic."—Ewa Thompson, Slavic and East European Journal
“A must for every reader of Gombrowicz.”—Denis Hollier, New York University ...
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"These exuberant stories, so startlingly fresh, so vigorous, and so wildly inventive, are a delight"-Alastair Reid "Gombrowicz is one of the most original and gifted writers of the twentieth century: he belongs at the very summit, at the side of his kindred spirits, Kafka and Céline."-Louis Begley "One of the greatest novelists of our century."-Milan Kundera Stunningly original in both style and content, these stories are hilarious yet have an undercurrent of profound moral disquiet and horror when the respectable turns slowly but inexorably into the outrageous, conveying both the horrors of upper-class life and the deepest anguish of the human condition. ...
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