Milan Kundera called Witold Gombrowicz "one of the great novelists of our century." His most famous novel, "Cosmos," the recipient of the 1967 International Prize for Literature, is now available in a critically acclaimed translation, for the first time directly from the Polish, by the award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt.
"Cosmos" is a metaphysical noir thriller narrated by Witold, a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns. On his way to a relaxing vacation he meets the despondent Fuks. As they set off together for a family-run pension in the Carpathian Mountains they discover a dead bird hanging from a string. Is this a strange but meaningless occurrence or is it the beginning of a string of bizarre events? As the young men become embroiled in the Chekhovian travails of the family running the pension, Grombrowicz creates a gripping narrative where the reader questions who is sane and who is safe?

In this bitterly funny novel 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 was deemed scandalous and subversive by Nazis, Stalinists, and the Polish Communist regime in turn and was officially banned in Poland for decades. It has nonetheless remained one of the most influential works of twentieth-century European literature. "Ferdydurke, among its centrifugal charms, includes some of the truest and funniest literary satire in print."-John Updike "A wonderfully subversive, self-absorbed, hilarious book. Think Kafka translated by Groucho Marx, with commentaries."-Kirkus Reviews "The author's exuberant humor, suggesting the absurdist drama of Eugene Ionesco, if not the short fiction of Franz Kafka, is readily apparent in this new translation. . . . Highly recommended."-Richard Koss, Library Journal Winner of the 2001 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association

A brilliant, semiautobiographical satirical novel from one of the foremost figures in twentieth-century Polish literature, now in a new English translation Considered by many to be among the greatest writers of the past hundred years, Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz explores the modern predicament of exile and displacement in a disintegrating world in his acclaimed classic Trans-Atlantyk. Gombrowicz's most personal novel-and arguably his most iconoclastic-Trans-Atlantyk is written in the style of a gaweda, a tale told by the fireside in a language that originated in the seventeenth century. It recounts the often farcical adventures of a penniless young writer stranded in Argentina when the Nazis invade his homeland, and his subsequent "adoption" by the Polish embassy staff and emigre community. Based loosely on Gombrowicz's own experiences as an expatriate, Trans-Atlantyk is steeped in humor and sharply pointed satire, interlaced with dark visions of war and its horrors, that entreats the individual and society in general to rise above the suffocating constraints of nationalistic, sexual, and patriotic mores. The novel's themes are universal and its execution ingenious-a masterwork of twentieth-century literary art from an author whom John Updike called "one of the profoundest of the late moderns."