What: Swimming in the Dark
By: Tomasz Jedrowski
Host: Rick
Where: Zoom
When: Feb. 20 at 1:15 PM
Contact Rick for details or to subscribe to book club notices by email here.
Book Review:
“Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you’ll get a sense of
|
Jedrowski’s moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn
apart.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.” — Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the Animals
|
Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of Communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on
|
opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of André Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.
When university student Ludwik meets Janusz
|
at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon
becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-
|
consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks
|
in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.
|
Inhabiting a beautiful, natural world removed
|
from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive Communist and Catholic society,
|
the passion they share is utterly unthinkable. Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic
|
Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly coveted
|
government position. Ludwik is drawn toward
|
impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore
|
rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and
|
personal and political differences slowly begin
|
to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.
|
Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing
|
apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend
|
of romance, postwar politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and
|
intense, Tomasz Jedrowski’s indelible and
|
thought-provoking literary debut explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.
|
|
