A balloonist is set upon by erotic lepers… A ship’s passenger notices a human eye on the deck… A virginal young girl gnaws raw meat from a bone… Stunningly original in both style and content, and translated into English for the first time, these stories by one of the great writers of the twentieth century are often 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. Witold Gombrowicz has perfect pitch for language; he revels in linguistic play, combining words in the most brilliant and extraordinary ways. The commonplace and the everyday are juxtaposed with the bizarre and unsettling to make a world in which unspeakable subconscious urges have a habit of poking through the surface of ordinary life, altering it forever.

PURCHASE