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 . Praise for The Possessed “ The Possessed is neither serious gothic, nor serious gothic parody, but something else that partakes of each . . . The reader too feels this unease, this dread, this anxiety, while also noting the silly, underwhelming effect of a towel being the harbinger of evil, a duality that well exemplifies Gombrowicz’s simultaneous earnestness and sarcasm . . . Behind the gothic tropes and literal possession, though, one still detects Gombrowicz’s sly humor and preoccupation with youthful obsessions leading to violence, motifs that receive more philosophically dense treatment in the later works Pornografia and Cosmos.”— Eric Vanderwall, Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation “Eighty-five years after the Nazi invasion of Poland interrupted its original serial publication, Gombrowicz’s second novel receives its first complete Polish-to-English direct translation . . . Crumbling antiquity, petty scheming, romantic comedy of manners—these are the foundations of an unpredictable gothic pastiche, both brazenly funny and deeply spooky. The short paragraphs fly by, buzzing with intrigue and danger . . . Lloyd-Jones’ translation crackles with choice phrases, deftly capturing Gombrowicz’s gorgeous scenic descriptions, mordant sense of humor, and evocations of lurking horror. A delightful revelation of an interbellum novel from one of the great Polish modernists.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “This 1939 treasure from Polish modernist Gombrowicz, available in its entirety for the first time in English, involves a young tennis coach entangled in intrigue and supernatural phenomena . . Gombrowicz fills the plot with genre tropes . . . 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 Maurier’s Rebecca and as a knowing parody.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Gothic themes and melodramatic flourishes dramatize a modernist novel preoccupied with the fluidity of identity . . . In allowing the utter weirdness of the great Polish modernist to shine through, this new English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, best known for her translations of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, may invite reassessment of its place in his oeuvre.”— Booklist “ The Possessed lampoons stale literary conventions . . . An eye-rolling pastiche of three genres: gothic chiller, Romeo-and-Juliet romance, and detective yarn. You could call it a shaggy towel story . . . Usefully serves as an introduction to the writer’s comically spiky sensibility.”— Bill Marx, Arts Fuse “[A] seriously good comic novel . . . Exuberant, playful, insincere, sometimes haughty, Gombrowicz was one of Poland’s greatest modernist writers . . . Brimming with unruly, high-octane prose, the book has the hallmarks of a classic gothic story: a haunted castle, a mad prince and his conniving secretary—and, of course, treasure. At first glance, this surface is rather depthless, but look closer and you’ll see the philosophically minded Gombrowicz getting on with what he described as the central aim of his writing: ‘to forge a path through the Unreal to Reality.’”— Matthew Janney, Financial Times “ The Possessed reads like a modern Gothic tale written by Dostoevsky, then touched-up and made even odder by the pen of George Saunders. It is certainly one of Gombrowicz’s