In this bitterly funny novel by the renowned Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, a writer finds himself tossed into a chaotic world of schoolboys by a diabolical professor who wishes to reduce him to childishness. Originally published in Poland in 1937, Ferdydurke became an instant literary sensation and catapulted the young author to fame. Deemed scandalous and subversive by Nazis, Stalinists, and the Polish Communist regime in turn, the novel (as well as all of Gombrowicz's other works) was officially banned in Poland for decades. It has nonetheless remained one of the most influential works of twentieth-century European literature. Ferdydurke is translated here directly from the Polish for the first time. Danuta Borchardt deftly captures Gombrowicz's playful and idiosyncratic style, and she allows English speakers to experience fully the masterpiece of a writer whom Milan Kundera describes as “one of the great novelists of our century.”

THE FERDYDURKE MCQ (MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS) SERVES AS A VALUABLE RESOURCE FOR INDIVIDUALS AIMING TO DEEPEN THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF VARIOUS COMPETITIVE EXAMS, CLASS TESTS, QUIZ COMPETITIONS, AND SIMILAR ASSESSMENTS. WITH ITS EXTENSIVE COLLECTION OF MCQS, THIS BOOK EMPOWERS YOU TO ASSESS YOUR GRASP OF THE SUBJECT MATTER AND YOUR PROFICIENCY LEVEL. BY ENGAGING WITH THESE MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS, YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT, IDENTIFY AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT, AND LAY A SOLID FOUNDATION. DIVE INTO THE FERDYDURKE MCQ TO EXPAND YOUR FERDYDURKE KNOWLEDGE AND EXCEL IN QUIZ COMPETITIONS, ACADEMIC STUDIES, OR PROFESSIONAL ENDEAVORS. THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS ARE PROVIDED AT THE END OF EACH PAGE, MAKING IT EASY FOR PARTICIPANTS TO VERIFY THEIR ANSWERS AND PREPARE EFFECTIVELY.

Examines the themes, characters, plots, style, and technique of 347 works by authors from the non-English speaking countries of the world, including Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, and Russia.

Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form provides a new and comprehensive account of the writing and thought of the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. While Gombrowicz is probably the key Polish modernist writer, with a stature in his native Poland equivalent to that of Joyce or Beckett in the English language, he remains little known in English. As well as providing a commentary on his novels, plays, and short stories, this book sets Gombrowicz's writing in the context of contemporary cultural theory. The author performs a detailed examination of Gombrowicz's major literary and theatrical work, showing how his conception of form is highly resonant with contemporary, postmodern theories of identity. This book is the essential companion to one of Eastern Europe's most important literary figures whose work, banned by the Nazis and suppressed by Poland's Communist government, has only recently become well known in the West.

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) was born and lived in Poland for the first half of his life but spent twenty-four years as an émigré in Argentina before returning to Europe to live in West Berlin and finally Vence, France. His works have always been of interest to those studying Polish or Argentinean or Latin American literature, but in recent years the trend toward a transnational perspective in scholarship has brought his work to increasing prominence. Indeed, the complicated web of transnational contact zones where Polish, Argentinean, French and German cultures intersect to influence his work is now seen as the appropriate lens through which his creativity ought to be examined. This volume contributes to the transnational interpretation of Gombrowicz by bringing together a distinguished group of North American, Latin American, and European scholars to offer new analyses in three distinct themes of study that have not as yet been greatly explored — Translation, Affect and Politics. How does one translate not only Gombrowicz’s words into various languages, but the often cultural-laden meaning and the particular style and tone of his writing? What is it that passes between author and reader that causes an affect? How did Gombrowicz’s negotiation of the turbulent political worlds of Poland and Argentina shape his writing? The three divisions of this collection address these questions from multiple perspectives, thereby adding significantly to little known aspects of his work.

Susan Sontag has said that her earliest idea of what a writer should be was "someone who is interested in everything." Thirty-five years after her first collection of essays, the now classic Against Interpretation, our most important essayist has chosen more than forty longer and shorter pieces from the last two decades that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideas. "Reading" offers ardent, freewheeling considerations of talismanic writers from her own private canon, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Randall Jarrell, Roland Barthes, Machado de Assis, W. G. Sebald, Borges, and Elizabeth Hardwick. "Seeing" is a series of luminous and incisive encounters with film, dance, photography, painting, opera, and theatre. And in the final section, "There and Here," Sontag explores some of her own commitments: to the work (and activism) of conscience, to the concreteness of historical understanding, and to the vocation of the writer. Where the Stress Falls records a great American writer's urgent engagement with some of the most significant aesthetic and moral issues of the late twentieth century, and provides a brilliant and clear-eyed appraisal of what is at stake, in this new century, in the survival of that inheritance.

Examines Gombrowicz's modernist aesthetics in the context of his critique of nationalism, his exploration of queer eroticism, and his interest in hybrid and subaltern identities.