The Possessed

In&nbsp The Possessed, Witold Gombrowicz, considered by&nbsp many to be Poland’s greatest modernist, draws together&nbsp the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a&nbsp darkly funny and playful subversion of the form. With&nbsp dreams of escaping his small-town existence and the&nbsp limitations of his status, a young tennis coach travels&nbsp to the heart of the Polish countryside where he is to&nbsp train Maja Ocholowska, a beautiful and promising&nbsp player whose bourgeois family has fallen upon difficult&nbsp circumstances. But no sooner has he arrived than the&nbsp relationship with his pupil develops into one of twisted&nbsp love and hate, and he becomes embroiled in the fantastic&nbsp happenings taking place at the dilapidated castle&nbsp nearby.

Haunted kitchens, bewitched towels, conniving&nbsp secretaries and famous clairvoyants all conspire to&nbsp determine the fate of the young lovers and the mad prince&nbsp residing in the castle. Translated directly into English&nbsp for the first time by Antonia Lloyd-Jones,&nbsp The Possessed&nbsp is a comic masterpiece that, despite being a literary&nbsp pastiche, has all the hallmarks of Gombrowicz’s typically&nbsp provocative style.